de quincey's writings. the "confessions of an english opium eater," and "suspiria de profundis," form the first volume of this series of mr. de quincey's writings. a third volume will shortly be issued, containing some of his most interesting papers contributed to the english magazines. biographical essays. by thomas de quincey, author of "confessions of an english opium-eater," etc. etc. shakspeare. [endnote: 1] william shakspeare, the protagonist on the great arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human intellect, was born at stratford-upon-avon, in the county of warwick, in the year 1564, and upon some day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of april. it is certain that he was baptized on the 25th; and from that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradition, malone has inferred that he was born on the 23d. there is doubtless, on the one hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, as either operated in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a conclusion; for children might be baptized, and were baptized, at various distances from their birth: yet, on the other hand, the 23d is as likely to have been the day as any other; and more likely than any earlier day, upon two arguments. first, because there was probably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, that shakspeare died upon his birthday: now it is beyond a doubt that he died upon the 23d of april. secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption, that no parents, living in a simple community, tenderly alive to the pieties of household duty, and in an age still clinging reverentially to the ceremonial ordinances of religion, would much delay the adoption of their child into the great family of christ. considering the extreme frailty of an infant's life during its two earliest years, to delay would often be to disinherit the child of its christian privileges; privileges not the less eloquent to the feelings from being profoundly mysterious, and, in the english church, forced not only upon the attention, but even upon the eye of the most thoughtless. according to the discipline of the english church, the unbaptized are buried with "maimed rites," shorn of their obsequies, and sternly denied that "sweet and solemn farewell," by which otherwise the church expresses her final charity with all men; and not only so, but they are even _locally_ separated and sequestrated. ground the most hallowed, and populous with christian burials of households, "that died in peace with one another. father, sister, son, and brother," opens to receive the vilest malefactor; by which the church symbolically expresses her maternal willingness to gather back into her fold those even of her flock who have strayed from her by the most memorable aberrations; and yet, with all this indulgence, she banishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of the unbaptized. to them and to suicides she turns a face of wrath. with this gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it is difficult to suppose that any parents would risk their own reproaches, by putting the fulfilment of so grave a duty on the hazard of a convulsion fit. the case of royal children is different; their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks but the household chaplains of the palace were always at hand, night and day, to baptize them in the very agonies of death. [endnote: 3] we must presume, therefore, that william shakspeare was born on some day very little anterior to that of his baptism; and the more so because the season of the year was lovely and genial, the 23d of april in 1564, corresponding in fact with what we now call the 3d of may, so that, whether the child was to be carried abroad, or the clergyman to be summoned, no hindrance would arise from the weather. one only argument has sometimes struck us for supposing that the 22d might be the day, and not the 23d; which is, that shakspeare's sole granddaughter, lady barnard, was married on the 22d of april, 1626, ten years exactly from the poet's death; and the reason for choosing this day _might_ have had a reference to her illustrious grandfather's birthday, which, there is good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in the family for generations. still this choice _may_ have been an accident, or governed merely by reason of convenience. and, on the whole, it is as well perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief, that shakspeare was born and died on the 23d of april. we cannot do wrong if we drink to his memory on both 22d and 23d. on a first review of the circumstances, we have reason to feel no little perplexity in finding the materials for a life of this transcendent writer so meagre and so few; and amongst them the larger part of doubtful authority. all the energy of curiosity directed upon this subject, through a period of one hundred and fifty years, (for so long it is since betterton the actor began to make researches,) has availed us little or nothing. neither the local traditions of his provincial birthplace, though sharing with london through half a century the honor of his familiar presence, nor the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom he lived in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an outline of his history, as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious records of a grave-stone. that he lived, and that he died, and that he was "a little lower than the angels;"--these make up pretty nearly the amount of our undisputed report. it may be doubted, indeed, whether at this day we arc as accurately acquainted with the life of shakspeare as with that of chaucer, though divided from each other by an interval of two centuries, and (what should have been more effectual towards oblivion) by the wars of the two roses. and yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region, such as warwickshire at that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial through the generation succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which would pursue the motions of one living so large a part of his life at a distance from his wife, but also from the final reverence and honor which would settle upon the memory of a poet so predominently successful; of one who, in a space of five and twenty years, after running a bright career in the capital city of his native land, and challenging notice from the throne, had retired with an ample fortune, created by his personal efforts, and by labors purely intellectual. how are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if from lethe, which has swept away so entirely the traditional memorials of one so illustrious? such is the fatality of error which overclouds every question connected with shakspeare, that two of his principal critics, steevens and malone, have endeavored to solve the difficulty by cutting it with a falsehood. they deny in effect that he _was_ illustrious in the century succeeding to his own, however much he has since become so. we shall first produce their statements in their own words, and we shall then briefly review them. steevens delivers _his_ opinion in the following terms: "how little shakspeare was once read, may be understood from tate, who, in his dedication to the altered play of king lear, speaks of the original as an obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a friend; and the author of the tatler, having occasion to quote a few lines out of macbeth, was content to receive them from davenant's alteration of that celebrated drama, in which almost every original beauty is either awkwardly disguised or arbitrarily omitted." another critic, who cites this passage from steevens, pursues the hypothesis as follows: "in fifty years after his death, dryden mentions that he was then become _a little obsolete_. in the beginning of the last century, lord shaftesbury complains of his _rude unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit_. it is certain that, for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly owing to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and partly to the licentious taste encouraged in charles ii's time, and perhaps partly to the incorrect state of his works, he was almost entirely neglected." this critic then goes on to quote with approbation the opinion of malone,--"that if he had been read, admired, studied, and imitated, in the same degree as he is now, the enthusiasm of some one or other of his admirers in the last age would have induced him to make some inquiries concerning the history of his theatrical career, and the anecdotes of his private life." after which this enlightened writer re-affirms and clenches the judgment he has quoted, by saying,--"his admirers, however, _if he had admirers in that age_, possessed no portion of such enthusiasm." it may, perhaps, be an instructive lesson to young readers, if we now show them, by a short sifting of these confident dogmatists, how easy it is for a careless or a half-read man to circulate the most absolute falsehoods under the semblance of truth; falsehoods which impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. we believe that not one word or illustration is uttered in the sentences cited from these three critics, which is not _virtually_ in the very teeth of the truth. to begin with mr. nahum tate. this poor grub of literature, if he did really speak of lear as "an _obscure_ piece, recommended to his notice by a friend," of which we must be allowed to doubt, was then uttering a conscious falsehood. it happens that lear was one of the few shakspearian dramas which had kept the stage unaltered. but it is easy to see a mercenary motive in such an artifice as this. mr. nahum tate is not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they are "well known:" they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest of travesties, mr. nahum's lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. for himself, he belonged to the age of dryden rather than of pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of the revolution; and his lear, we believe, was arranged in the year 1682. but the family to which he belongs is abundantly recorded in the dunciad, and his own name will be found amongst its catalogues of heroes. with respect to _the author of the tatler_, a very different explanation is requisite. steevens means the reader to understand addison; but it does not follow that the particular paper in question was from his pen. nothing, however, could be more natural than to quote from the common form of the play as then in possession of the stage. it was _there_, beyond a doubt, that a fine gentleman living upon town, and not professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature, (a light in which we are always to regard the writers of the spectator, guardian, &c.,) would be likely to have learned anything he quoted from macbeth. this we say generally of the writers in those periodical papers; but, with reference to addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinction. it is already pretty well known, that addison had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature of his own country. it is known, also, that he did not think such an acquaintance any ways essential to the character of an elegant scholar and _litterateur_. quite enough he found it, and more than enough for the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the foremost latin poets, and a very slender one indeed with the grecian. _how_ slender, we can see in his "travels." of modern authors, none as yet had been published with notes, commentaries, or critical collations of the text; and, accordingly, addison looked upon all of them, except those few who professed themselves followers in the retinue and equipage of the ancients, as creatures of a lower race. boileau, as a mere imitator and propagator of horace, he read, and probably little else amongst the french classics. hence it arose that he took upon himself to speak sneeringly of tasso. to this, which was a bold act for his timid mind, he was emboldened by the countenance of boileau. of the elder italian authors, such as ariosto, and, _a fortiori_, dante, be knew absolutely nothing. passing to our own literature, it is certain that addison was profoundly ignorant of chaucer and of spenser. milton only,--and why? simply because he was a brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge between the christian literature and the pagan,--addison had read and esteemed. there was also in the very constitution of milton's mind, in the majestic regularity and planetary solemnity of its _epic_ movements, something which he could understand and appreciate. as to the meteoric and incalculable eccentricities of the _dramatic_ mind, as it displayed itself in the heroic age of our drama, amongst the titans of 1590-1630, they confounded and overwhelmed him. in particular, with regard to shakspeare, we shall now proclaim a discovery which we made some twenty years ago. we, like others, from seeing frequent references to shakspeare in the spectator, had acquiesced in the common belief, that although addison was no doubt profoundly unlearned in shakspeare's language, and thoroughly unable to do him justice, (and this we might well assume, since his great rival pope, who had expressly studied shakspeare, was, after all, so memorably deficient in the appropriate knowledge,)--yet, that of course he had a vague popular knowledge of the mighty poet's cardinal dramas. accident only led us into a discovery of our mistake. twice or thrice we had observed, that if shakspeare were quoted, that paper turned out not to be addison's; and at length, by express examination, we ascertained the curious fact, that addison has never in one instance quoted or made any reference to shakspeare. but was this, as steevens most disingenuously pretends, to be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards shakspeare? was addison's neglect representative of a general neglect? if so, whence came rowe's edition, pope's, theobald's, sir thomas hanmer's, bishop warburton's, all upon the heels of one another? with such facts staring him in the face, how shameless must be that critic who could, in support of such a thesis, refer to " _the author of the tatler_" contemporary with all these editors. the truth is, addison was well aware of shakspeare's hold on the popular mind; too well aware of it. the feeble constitution of the poetic faculty, as existing in himself, forbade his sympathizing with shakspeare; the proportions were too colossal for his delicate vision; and yet, as one who sought popularity himself, he durst not shock what perhaps he viewed as a national prejudice. those who have happened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate music and "deep-inwoven harmonics" upon the feeling of an idiot, we may conceive what we mean. such music does not utterly revolt the idiot; on the contrary, it has a strange but a horrid fascination for him; it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly unhappy; and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of thoughts and slumbering instincts, which it is for his peace to have entirely obscured, because for him they can be revealed only partially, and with the sad effect of throwing a baleful gleam upon his blighted condition. do we mean, then, to compare addison with an idiot? not generally, by any means. nobody can more sincerely admire him where he was a man of real genius, viz., in his delineations of character and manners, or in the exquisite delicacies of his humor. but assuredly addison, as a poet, was amongst the sons of the feeble; and between the authors of cato and of king lear there was a gulf never to be bridged over. [endnote: 4] but dryden, we are told, pronounced shakspeare already in his day _"a little obsolete."_ here now we have wilful, deliberate falsehood. _obsolete_, in dryden's meaning, does not imply that he was so with regard to his popularity, (the question then at issue,) but with regard to his diction and choice of words. to cite dryden as a witness for any purpose against shakspeare,--dryden, who of all men had the most ransacked wit and exhausted language in celebrating the supremacy of shakspeare's genius, does indeed require as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity in principle. but then lord shaftesbury, who may be taken as half way between dryden and pope, (dryden died in 1700, pope was then twelve years old, and lord s. wrote chiefly, we believe, between 1700 and 1710,) "complains," it seems, "of his rude unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit." what if he does? let the whole truth be told, and then we shall see how much stress is to be laid upon such a judgment. the second lord shaftesbury, the author of the characteristics, was the grandson of that famous political agitator, the chancellor shaftesbury, who passed his whole life in storms of his own creation. the second lord shaftesbury was a man of crazy constitution, querulous from ill health, and had received an eccentric education from his eccentric grandfather. he was practised daily in _talking_ latin, to which afterwards he added a competent study of the greek; and finally he became unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. he sneers continually at the regular built academic pedant; but he himself, though no academic, was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. no thought however beautiful, no image however magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in english; but present him with the most trivial common-places in greek, and he unaffectedly fancied them divine; mistaking the pleasurable sense of his own power in a difficult and rare accomplishment for some peculiar force or beauty in the passage. such was the outline of his literary taste. and was it upon shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that he lavished his pedantry? far from it. he attacked milton with no less fervor; he attacked dryden with a thousand times more. jeremy taylor he quoted only to ridicule; and even locke, the confidential friend of his grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. as to shakspeare, so far from lord shaftesbury's censures arguing his deficient reputation, the very fact of his noticing him at all proves his enormous popularity; for upon system he noticed those only who ruled the public taste. the insipidity of his objections to shakspeare may be judged from this, that he comments in a spirit of absolute puerility upon the name _desdemona_, as though intentionally formed from the greek word for _superstition_. in fact, he had evidently read little beyond the list of names in shakspeare; yet there is proof enough that the irresistible beauty of what little he _had_ read was too much for all his pedantry, and startled him exceedingly; for ever afterwards he speaks of shakspeare as one who, with a little aid from grecian sources, really had something great and promising about him. as to modern authors, neither this lord shaftesbury nor addison read any thing for the latter years of their lives but bayle's dictionary. and most of the little scintillations of erudition, which may be found in the notes to the characteristics, and in the essays of addison, are derived, almost without exception, and uniformly without acknowledgment, from bayle. [endnote: 5] finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that "for nearly a hundred years after his death shakspeare was almost entirely neglected," we shall meet this scandalous falsehood, by a rapid view of his fortunes during the century in question. the tradition has always been, that shakspeare was honored by the especial notice of queen elizabeth, as well as by that of james i. at one time we were disposed to question the truth of this tradition; but that was for want of having read attentively the lines of ben jonson to the memory of shakspeare, those generous lines which have so absurdly been taxed with faint praise. jonson could make no mistake on this point; he, as one of shakspeare's familiar companions, must have witnessed at the very time, and accompanied with friendly sympathy, every motion of royal favor towards shakspeare. now he, in words which leave no room for doubt, exclaims, "sweet swan of avon, what a sight it were to see thee in our waters yet appear; and make those flights upon the banks of thames, _that so did take eliza and our james."_ these princes, then, _were_ taken, were fascinated, with some of shakspeare's dramas. in elizabeth the approbation would probably be sincere. in james we can readily suppose it to have been assumed; for he was a pedant in a different sense from lord shaftesbury; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from caring little or nothing for any poetry, although he wrote about its mechanic rules. still the royal _imprimatur_ would be influential and serviceable no less when offered hypocritically than in full sincerity. next let us consider, at the very moment of shakspeare's death, who were the leaders of the british youth, the _principes juventutis_, in the two fields, equally important to a great poet's fame, of rank and of genius. the prince of wales and john milton; the first being then about sixteen years old, the other about eight. now these two great powers, as we may call them, these presiding stars over all that was english in thought and action, were both impassioned admirers of shakspeare. each of them counts for many thousands. the prince of wales [endnote: 6] had learned to appreciate shakspeare, not originally from reading him, but from witnessing the court representations of his plays at whitehall. afterwards we know that he made shakspeare his closet companion, for he was reproached with doing so by milton. and we know also, from the just criticism pronounced upon the character and diction of caliban by one of charles's confidential counsellors, lord falkland, that the king's admiration of shakspeare had impressed a determination upon the court reading. as to milton, by double prejudices, puritanical and classical, his mind had been preoccupied against the full impressions of shakspeare. and we know that there is such a thing as keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or state of abeyance; an effort of self-conquest realized in more cases than one by the ancient fathers, both greek and latin, with regard to the profane classics. intellectually they admired, and would not belie their admiration; but they did not give their hearts cordially, they did not abandon themselves to their natural impulses. they averted their eyes and weaned their attention from the dazzling object. such, probably, was milton's state of feeling towards shakspeare after 1642, when the theatres were suppressed, and the fanatical fervor in its noontide heat. yet even then he did not belie his reverence intellectually for shakspeare; and in his younger days we know that he had spoken more enthusiastically of shakspeare, than he ever did again of any uninspired author. not only did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he declares that kings would wish to die, if by dying they could obtain such a monument in the hearts of men; but he also speaks of him in his _il penseroso_, as the tutelary genius of the english stage. in this transmission of the torch (greek: lampadophoria) dryden succeeds to milton; he was born nearly thirty years later; about thirty years they were contemporaries; and by thirty years, or nearly, dryden survived his great leader. dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth century. and we have now arrived within nine years of the era, when the critical editions started in hot succession to one another. the names we have mentioned were the great influential names of the century. but of inferior homage there was no end. how came betterton the actor, how came davenant, how came rowe, or pope, by their intense (if not always sound) admiration for shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming upwards like incense to the pagan deities in ancient times, from altars erected at every turning upon all the paths of men? but it is objected that inferior dramatists were sometimes preferred to shakspeare; and again, that vile travesties of shakspeare were preferred to the authentic dramas. as to the first argument, let it be remembered, that if the saints of the chapel are always in the same honor, because _there_ men are simply discharging a duty, which once due will be due for ever; the saints of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the local genius, and to the very reasons for having a theatre at all. men go thither for amusement. this is the paramount purpose, and even acknowledged merit or absolute superiority must give way to it. does a man at paris expect to see moliere reproduced in proportion to his admitted precedency in the french drama? on the contrary, that very precedency argues such a familiarization with his works, that those who are in quest of relaxation will reasonably prefer any recent drama to that which, having lost all its novelty, has lost much of its excitement. we speak of ordinary minds; but in cases of _public_ entertainments, deriving part of their power from scenery and stage pomp, novelty is for all minds an essential condition of attraction. moreover, in some departments of the comic, beaumont and fletcher, when writing in combination, really had a freedom and breadth of manner which excels the comedy of shakspeare. as to the altered shakspeare as taking precedency of the genuine shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous. the public were never allowed a choice; the great majority of an audience even now cannot be expected to carry the real shakspeare in their mind, so as to pursue a comparison between that and the alteration. their comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have opportunities of seeing; that is, between the various pieces presented to them by the managers of theatres. further than this, it is impossible for them to extend their office of judging and collating; and the degenerate taste which substituted the caprices of davenant, the rants of dryden, or the filth of tate, for the jewellery of shakspeare, cannot with any justice be charged upon the public, not one in a thousand of whom was furnished with any means of comparing, but exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical managers,) who had the very amplest. yet even in excuse for _them_ much may be said. the very length of some plays compelled them to make alterations. the best of shakspeare's dramas, king lear, is the least fitted for representation; and, even for the vilest alteration, it ought in candor to be considered that possession is nine points of the law. he who would not have introduced, was often obliged to retain. finally, it is urged, that the small number of editions through which shakspeare passed in the seventeenth century, furnishes a separate argument, and a conclusive one against his popularity. we answer, that, considering the bulk of his plays collectively, the editions were _not_ few. compared with any known case, the copies sold of shakspeare were quite as many as could be expected under the circumstances. ten or fifteen times as much consideration went to the purchase of one great folio like shakspeare, as would attend the purchase of a little volume like waller or donne. without reviews, or newspapers, or advertisements, to diffuse the knowledge of books, the progress of literature was necessarily slow, and its expansion narrow. but this is a topic which has always been treated unfairly, not with regard to shakspeare only, but to milton, as well as many others. the truth is, we have not facts enough to guide us; for the number of editions often tells nothing accurately as to the number of copies. with respect to shakspeare it is certain, that, had his masterpieces been gathered into small volumes, shakspeare would have had a most extensive sale. as it was, there can be no doubt, that from his own generation, throughout the seventeenth century, and until the eighteenth began to accommodate, not any greater popularity in _him_, but a greater taste for reading in the public, his fame never ceased to be viewed as a national trophy of honor; and the most illustrious men of the seventeenth century were no whit less fervent in their admiration than those of the eighteenth and the nineteenth, either as respected its strength and sincerity, or as respected its open profession. [endnote: 7] it is therefore a false notion, that the general sympathy with the merits of shakspeare ever beat with a languid or intermitting pulse. undoubtedly, in times when the functions of critical journals and of newspapers were not at hand to diffuse or to strengthen the impressions which emanated from the capital, all opinions must have travelled slowly into the provinces. but even then, whilst the perfect organs of communication were wanting, indirect substitutes were supplied by the necessities of the times, or by the instincts of political zeal. two channels especially lay open between the great central organ of the national mind, and the remotest provinces. parliaments were occasionally summoned, (for the judges' circuits were too brief to produce much effect,) and during their longest suspensions, the nobility, with large retinues, continually resorted to the court. but an intercourse more constant and more comprehensive was maintained through the agency of the two universities. already, in the time of james i., the growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent birth of a new interest in political questions, had begun to express itself at oxford, and still more so at cambridge. academic persons stationed themselves as sentinels at london, for the purpose of watching the court and the course of public affairs. these persons wrote letters, like those of the celebrated joseph mede, which we find in ellis's historical collections, reporting to their fellow-collegians all the novelties of public life as they arose, or personally carried down such reports, and thus conducted the general feelings at the centre into lesser centres, from which again they were diffused into the ten thousand parishes of england; for, (with a very few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, welch or cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have spent his three years at one or other of the english universities. and by this mode of diffusion it is, that we can explain the strength with which shakspeare's thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a very early period upon the national literature, and even more generally upon the national thinking and conversation.[endnote: 8] the question, therefore, revolves upon us in threefold difficulty--how, having stepped thus prematurely into this inheritance of fame, leaping, as it were, thus abruptly into the favor alike of princes and the enemies of princes, had it become possible that in his native place, (honored still more in the final testimonies of his preference when founding a family mansion,) such a man's history, and the personal recollections which cling so affectionately to the great intellectual potentates who have recommended themselves by gracious manners, could so soon and so utterly have been obliterated? malone, with childish irreflection, ascribes the loss of such memorials to the want of enthusiasm in his admirers. local researches into private history had not then commenced. such a taste, often petty enough in its management, was the growth of after ages. else how came spenser's life and fortunes to be so utterly overwhelmed in oblivion? no poet of a high order could be more popular. the answer we believe to be this: twenty-six years after shakspeare's death commenced the great parliamentary war. this it was, and the local feuds arising to divide family from family, brother from brother, upon which we must charge the extinction of traditions and memorials, doubtless abundant up to that era. the parliamentary contest, it will be said, did not last above three years; the king's standard having been first raised at nottingham in august, 1642, and the battle of naseby (which terminated the open warfare) having been fought in june, 1645. or even if we extend its duration to the surrender of the last garrison, that war terminated in the spring of 1646. and the brief explosions of insurrection or of scottish invasion, which occurred on subsequent occasions, were all locally confined, and none came near to warwickshire, except the battle of worcester, more than five years after. this is true; but a short war will do much to efface recent and merely personal memorials. and the following circumstances of the war were even more important than the general fact. first of all, the very mansion founded by shakspeare became the military headquarters for the queen in 1644, when marching from the eastern coast of england to join the king in oxford; and one such special visitation would be likely to do more serious mischief in the way of extinction, than many years of general warfare. secondly, as a fact, perhaps, equally important, birmingham, the chief town of warwickshire, and the adjacent district, the seat of our hardware manufactures, was the very focus of disaffection towards the royal cause. not only, therefore, would this whole region suffer more from internal and spontaneous agitation, but it would be the more frequently traversed vindictively from without, and harassed by flying parties from oxford, or others of the king's garrisons. thirdly, even apart from the political aspects of warwickshire, this county happens to be the central one of england, as regards the roads between the north and south; and birmingham has long been the great central axis, [endnote: 9] in which all the radii from the four angles of england proper meet and intersect. mere accident, therefore, of local position, much more when united with that avowed inveteracy of malignant feeling, which was bitter enough to rouse a re-action of bitterness in the mind of lord clarendon, would go far to account for the wreck of many memorials relating to shakspeare, as well as for the subversion of that quiet and security for humble life, in which the traditional memory finds its best _nidus_. thus we obtain one solution, and perhaps the main one, of the otherwise mysterious oblivion which had swept away all traces of the mighty poet, by the time when those quiet days revolved upon england, in which again the solitary agent of learned research might roam in security from house to house, gleaning those personal remembrances which, even in the fury of civil strife, might long have lingered by the chimney corner. but the fierce furnace of war had probably, by its _local_ ravages, scorched this field of natural tradition, and thinned the gleaner's inheritance by three parts out of four. this, we repeat, may be one part of the solution to this difficult problem. and if another is still demanded, possibly it may be found in the fact, hostile to the perfect consecration of shakspeare's memory, that after all he was a player. many a coarse-minded country gentleman, or village pastor, who would have held his town glorified by the distinction of having sent forth a great judge or an eminent bishop, might disdain to cherish the personal recollections which surrounded one whom custom regarded as little above a mountebank, and the illiberal law as a vagabond. the same degrading appreciation attached both to the actor in plays and to their author. the contemptuous appellation of "play-book," served as readily to degrade the mighty volume which contained lear and hamlet, as that of "play-actor," or "player-man," has always served with the illiberal or the fanatical to dishonor the persons of roscius or of garrick, of talma or of siddons. nobody, indeed, was better aware of this than the noble-minded shakspeare; and feelingly he has breathed forth in his sonnets this conscious oppression under which he lay of public opinion, unfavorable by a double title to his own pretensions; for, being both dramatic author and dramatic performer, he found himself heir to a twofold opprobrium, and at an era of english society when the weight of that opprobrium was heaviest. in reality, there was at this period a collision of forces acting in opposite directions upon the estimation of the stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the ministers in its equipage. puritanism frowned upon these pursuits, as ruinous to public morals; on the other hand, loyalty could not but tolerate what was patronized by the sovereign; and it happened that elizabeth, james, and charles i., were _all_ alike lovers and promoters of theatrical amusements, which were indeed more indispensable to the relief of court ceremony, and the monotony of aulic pomp, than in any other region of life. this royal support, and the consciousness that any brilliant success in these arts implied an unusual share of natural endowments, did something in mitigation of a scorn which must else have been intolerable to all generous natures. but whatever prejudice might thus operate against the perfect sanctity of shakspeare's posthumous reputation, it is certain that the splendor of his worldly success must have done much to obliterate that effect; his admirable colloquial talents a good deal, and his gracious affability still more. the wonder, therefore, will still remain, that betterton, in less than a century from his death, should have been able to glean so little. and for the solution of this wonder, we must throw ourselves chiefly upon the explanations we have made as to the parliamentary war, and the local ravages of its progress in the very district, of the very town, and the very house. if further arguments are still wanted to explain this mysterious abolition, we may refer the reader to the following succession of disastrous events, by which it should seem that a perfect malice of misfortune pursued the vestiges of the mighty poet's steps. in 1613, the globe theatre, with which he had been so long connected, was burned to the ground. soon afterwards a great fire occurred in stratford; and next, (without counting upon the fire of london, just fifty years after his death, which, however, would consume many an important record from periods far more remote,) the house of ben jonson, in which probably, as mr. campbell suggests, might be parts of his correspondence, was also burned. finally, there was an old tradition that lady barnard, the sole grand-daughter of shakspeare, had carried off many of his papers from stratford, and these papers have never since been traced. in many of the elder lives it has been asserted, that john shakspeare, the father of the poet, was a butcher, and in others that he was a woolstapler. it is now settled beyond dispute that he was a glover. this was his professed occupation in stratford, though it is certain that, with this leading trade, from which he took his denomination, he combined some collateral pursuits; and it is possible enough that, as openings offered, he may have meddled with many. in that age, and in a provincial town, nothing like the exquisite subdivision of labor was attempted which we now see realized in the great cities of christendom. and one trade is often found to play into another with so much reciprocal advantage, that even in our own days we do not much wonder at an enterprising man, in country places, who combines several in his own person. accordingly, john shakspeare is known to have united with his town calling the rural and miscellaneous occupations of a farmer. meantime his avowed business stood upon a very different footing from the same trade as it is exercised in modern times. gloves were in that age an article of dress more costly by much, and more elaborately decorated, than in our own. they were a customary present from some cities to the judges of assize, and to other official persons; a custom of ancient standing, and in some places, we believe, still subsisting; and in such cases it is reasonable to suppose, that the gloves must originally have been more valuable than the trivial modern article of the same name. so also, perhaps, in their origin, of the gloves given at funerals. in reality, whenever the simplicity of an age makes it difficult to renew the parts of a wardrobe, except in capital towns of difficult access, prudence suggests that such wares should be manufactured of more durable materials; and, being so, they become obviously susceptible of more lavish ornament. but it will not follow, from this essential difference in the gloves of shakspeare's age, that the glover's occupation was more lucrative. doubtless he sold more costly gloves, and upon each pair had a larger profit, but for that very reason he sold fewer. two or three gentlemen "of worship" in the neighborhood might occasionally require a pair of gloves, but it is very doubtful whether any inhabitant of stratford would ever call for so mere a luxury. the practical result, at all events, of john shakspeare's various pursuits, does not appear permanently to have met the demands of his establishment, and in his maturer years there are indications still surviving that he was under a cloud of embarrassment. he certainly lost at one time his social position in the town of stratford; but there is a strong presumption, in _our_ construction of the case, that he finally retrieved it; and for this retrieval of a station, which he had forfeited by personal misfortunes or neglect, he was altogether indebted to the filial piety of his immortal son. meantime the earlier years of the elder shakspeare wore the aspect of rising prosperity, however unsound might be the basis on which it rested. there can be little doubt that william shakspeare, from his birth up to his tenth or perhaps his eleventh year, lived in careless plenty, and saw nothing in his father's house but that style of liberal house-keeping, which has ever distinguished the upper yeomanry and the rural gentry of england. probable enough it is, that the resources for meeting this liberality were not strictly commensurate with the family income, but were sometimes allowed to entrench, by means of loans or mortgages, upon capital funds. the stress upon the family finances was perhaps at times severe; and that it was borne at all, must be imputed to the large and even splendid portion which john shakspeare received with his wife. this lady, for such she really was in an eminent sense, by birth as well as by connections, bore the beautiful name of mary arden, a name derived from the ancient forest district [endnote: 10] of the country; and doubtless she merits a more elaborate notice than our slender materials will furnish. to have been _the mother of shakspeare, _--how august a title to the reverence of infinite generations, and of centuries beyond the vision of prophecy. a plausible hypothesis has been started in modern times, that the facial structure, and that the intellectual conformation, may be deduced more frequently from the corresponding characteristics in the mother than in the father. it is certain that no very great man has ever existed, but that his greatness has been rehearsed and predicted in one or other of his parents. and it cannot be denied, that in the most eminent men, where we have had the means of pursuing the investigation, the mother has more frequently been repeated and reproduced than the father. we have known cases where the mother has furnished all the intellect, and the father all the moral sensibility; upon which assumption, the wonder ceases that _cicero,_ lord chesterfield, and other brilliant men, who took the utmost pains with their sons, should have failed so conspicuously; for possibly the mothers had been women of excessive and even exemplary stupidity. in the case of shakspeare, each parent, if we had any means of recovering their characteristics, could not fail to furnish a study of the most profound interest; and with regard to his mother in particular, if the modern hypothesis be true, and if we are indeed to deduce from her the stupendous intellect of her son, in that case she must have been a benefactress to her husband's family, beyond the promises of fairy land or the dreams of romance; for it is certain that to her chiefly this family was also indebted for their worldly comfort. mary arden was the youngest daughter and the heiress of robert arden, of wilmecote, esq., in the county of warwick. the family of arden was even then of great antiquity. about one century and a quarter before the birth of william shakspeare, a person bearing the same name as his maternal grandfather had been returned by the commissioners in their list of the warwickshire gentry; he was there styled robert arden, esq., of bromich. this was in 1433, or the 12th year of henry vi. in henry vii.'s reign, the ardens received a grant of lands from the crown; and in 1568, four years after the birth of william shakspeare, edward arden, of the same family, was sheriff of the county. mary arden was, therefore, a young lady of excellent descent and connections, and an heiress of considerable wealth. she brought to her husband, as her marriage portion, the landed estate of asbies, which, upon any just valuation, must be considered as a handsome dowry for a woman of her station. as this point has been contested, and as it goes a great way towards determining the exact social position of the poet's parents, let us be excused for sifting it a little more narrowly than might else seem warranted by the proportions of our present life. every question which it can be reasonable to raise at all, it must be reasonable to treat with at least so much of minute research, as may justify the conclusions which it is made to support. the estate of asbies contained fifty acres of arable land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. what may we assume to have been the value of its fee-simple? malone, who allows the total fortune of mary arden to have been 110l 13s 4d., is sure that the value of asbies could not have been more than one hundred pounds. but why? because, says he, the "average" rent of land at that time was no more than three shillings per acre. this we deny; but upon that assumption, the total yearly rent of fifty-six acres would be exactly eight guineas. [endnote: 11] and therefore, in assigning the value of asbies at one hundred pounds, it appears that malone must have estimated the land at no more than twelve years' purchase, which would carry the value to 100l. 16s. "even at this estimate," as the latest annotator [endnote: 12] on this subject _justly_ observes, "mary arden's portion was a larger one than was usually given to a landed gentleman's daughter." but this writer objects to malone's principle of valuation. "we find," says he, "that john shakspeare also farmed the meadow of tugton, containing sixteen acres, at the rate of eleven shillings per acre. now what proof has mr. malone adduced, that the acres of asbies were not as valuable as those of tugton? and if they were so, the former estate must have been worth between three and four hundred pounds." in the main drift of his objections we concur with mr. campbell. but as they are liable to some criticism, let us clear the ground of all plausible cavils, and then see what will be the result. malone, had he been alive, would probably have answered, that tugton was a farm specially privileged by nature; and that if any man contended for so unusual a rent as eleven shillings an acre for land not known to him, the _onus probandi_ would lie upon _him_. be it so; eleven shillings is certainly above the ordinary level of rent, but three shillings is below it. we contend, that for tolerably good land, situated advantageously, that is, with a ready access to good markets and good fairs, such as those of coventry, birmingham, gloucester, worcester, shrewsbury,. &c., one noble might be assumed as the annual rent; and that in such situations twenty years' purchase was not a valuation, even in elizabeth's reign, very unusual. let us, however, assume the rent at only five shillings, and land at sixteen years' purchase. upon this basis, the rent would be 14l, and the value of the fee simple 224l. now, if it were required to equate that sum with its present value, a very operose [endnote: 13] calculation might be requisite. but contenting ourselves with the gross method of making such equations between 1560 and the current century, that is, multiplying by five, we shall find the capital value of the estate to be eleven hundred and twenty pounds, whilst the annual rent would be exactly seventy. but if the estate had been sold, and the purchase-money lent upon mortgage, (the only safe mode of investing money at that time,) the annual interest would have reached 28l, equal to 140l of modern money; for mortgages in elizabeth's age readily produced ten per cent. a woman who should bring at this day an annual income of 140l to a provincial tradesman, living in a sort of _rus in urbe_, according to the simple fashions of rustic life, would assuredly be considered as an excellent match. and there can be little doubt that mary arden's dowry it was which, for some ten or a dozen years succeeding to his marriage, raised her husband to so much social consideration in stratford. in 1550 john shakspeare is supposed to have first settled in stratford, having migrated from some other part of warwickshire. in 1557 he married mary arden; in 1565, the year subsequent to the birth of his son william, his third child, he was elected one of the aldermen; and in the year 1568 he became first magistrate of the town, by the title of high bailiff. this year we may assume to have been that in which the prosperity of this family reached its zenith; for in this year it was, over and above the presumptions furnished by his civic honors, that he obtained a grant of arms from clarencieux of the heralds' college. on this occasion he declared himself worth five hundred pounds derived from his ancestors. and we really cannot understand the right by which critics, living nearly three centuries from his time, undertake to know his affairs better than himself, and to tax him with either inaccuracy or falsehood. no man would be at leisure to court heraldic honors, when he knew himself to be embarrassed, or apprehended that he soon might be so. a man whose anxieties had been fixed at all upon his daily livelihood would, by this chase after the armorial honors of heraldry, have made himself a butt for ridicule, such as no fortitude could enable him to sustain. in 1568, therefore, when his son william would be moving through his fifth year, john shakspeare, (now honored by the designation of _master_,) would be found at times in the society of the neighboring gentry. ten years in advance of this period he was already in difficulties. but there is no proof that these difficulties had then reached a point of degradation, or of memorable distress. the sole positive indications of his decaying condition are, that in 1578 he received an exemption from the small weekly assessment levied upon the aldermen of stratford for the relief of the poor; and that in the following year, 1579, he is found enrolled amongst the defaulters in the payment of taxes. the latter fact undoubtedly goes to prove that, like every man who is falling back in the world, he was occasionally in arrears. paying taxes is not like the honors awarded or the processions regulated by clarencieux; no man is ambitious of precedency there; and if a laggard pace in that duty is to be received as evidence of pauperism, nine tenths of the english people might occasionally be classed as paupers. with respect to his liberation from the weekly assessment, that may bear a construction different from the one which it has received. this payment, which could never have been regarded as a burthen, not amounting to five pounds annually of our present money, may have been held up as an exponent of wealth and consideration; and john shakspeare may have been required to resign it as an honorable distinction, not suitable to the circumstances of an embarrassed man. finally, the fact of his being indebted to robert sadler, a baker, in the sum of five pounds, and his being under the necessity of bringing a friend as security for the payment, proves nothing at all. there is not a town in europe, in which opulent men cannot be found that are backward in the payment of their debts. and the probability is, that master sadler acted like most people who, when they suppose a man to be going down in the world, feel their respect for him sensibly decaying, and think it wise to trample him under foot, provided only in that act of trampling they can squeeze out of him their own individual debt. like that terrific chorus in spohr's oratorio of st. paul, _" stone him to death "_ is the cry of the selfish and the illiberal amongst creditors, alike towards the just and the unjust amongst debtors. it was the wise and beautiful prayer of agar, "give me neither poverty nor riches;" and, doubtless, for quiet, for peace, and the _latentis semita vita_, that is the happiest dispensation. but, perhaps, with a view to a school of discipline and of moral fortitude, it might be a more salutary prayer, "give me riches _and_ poverty, and afterwards neither." for the transitional state between riches and poverty will teach a lesson both as to the baseness and the goodness of human nature, and will impress that lesson with a searching force, such as no borrowed experience ever can approach. most probable it is that shakspeare drew some of his powerful scenes in the timon of athens, those which exhibit the vileness of ingratitude and the impassioned frenzy of misanthropy, from his personal recollections connected with the case of his own father. possibly, though a cloud of two hundred and seventy years now veils it, this very master sadler, who was so urgent for his five pounds, and who so little apprehended that he should be called over the coals for it in the encyclopaedia britannica, may have compensate for the portrait of that lucullus who says of timon: "alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. many a time and often i have dined with him, and told him on't; and come again to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less; and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. every man has his fault, and honesty is his; i have told him on't, but i could never get him from it." for certain years, perhaps, john shakspeare moved on in darkness and sorrow: "his familiars from his buried fortunes slunk all away; left their false vows with him, like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self, a dedicated beggar to the air, with his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, walk'd, like contempt, alone." we, however, at this day, are chiefly interested in the case as it bears upon the education and youthful happiness of the poet. now if we suppose that from 1568, the high noon of the family prosperity, to 1578, the first year of their mature embarrassments, one half the interval was passed in stationary sunshine, and the latter half in the gradual twilight of declension, it will follow that the young william had completed his tenth year before he heard the first signals of distress; and for so long a period his education would probably be conducted on as liberal a scale as the resources of stratford would allow. through this earliest section of his life he would undoubtedly rank as a gentleman's son, possibly as the leader of his class, in stratford. but what rank he held through the next ten years, or, more generally, what was the standing in society of shakspeare until he had created a new station for himself by his own exertions in the metropolis, is a question yet unsettled, but which has been debated as keenly as if it had some great dependencies. upon this we shall observe, that could we by possibility be called to settle beforehand what rank were best for favoring the development of intellectual powers, the question might wear a face of deep practical importance; but when the question is simply as to a matter of fact, what _was_ the rank held by a man whose intellectual development has long ago been completed, this becomes a mere question of curiosity. the tree has fallen; it is confessedly the noblest of all the forest; and we must therefore conclude that the soil in which it flourished was either the best possible, or, if not so, that any thing bad in its properties had been disarmed and neutralized by the vital forces of the plant, or by the benignity of nature. if any future shakspeare were likely to arise, it might be a problem of great interest to agitate, whether the condition of a poor man or of a gentleman were best fitted to nurse and stimulate his faculties. but for the actual shakspeare, since what he was he was, and since nothing greater can be imagined, it is now become a matter of little moment whether his course lay for fifteen or twenty years through the humilities of absolute poverty, or through the chequered paths of gentry lying in the shade. whatever _was_, must, in this case at least, have been the best, since it terminated in producing shakspeare: and thus far we must all be optimists. yet still, it will be urged, the curiosity is not illiberal which would seek to ascertain the precise career through which shakspeare ran. this we readily concede; and we are anxious ourselves to contribute any thing in our power to the settlement of a point so obscure. what we have wished to protest against, is the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too generally been discussed. for, whilst some with a foolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm us with the insipid commonplaces about birth and ancient descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and rush eagerly into an ostentatious exhibition of all the circumstances which favor the notion of a humble station and humble connections; others, with equal forgetfulness of true dignity, plead with the intemperance and partiality of a legal advocate for the pretensions of shakspeare to the hereditary rank of gentleman. both parties violate the majesty of the subject. when we are seeking for the sources of the euphrates or the st. lawrence, we look for no proportions to the mighty volume of waters in that particular summit amongst the chain of mountains which embosoms its earliest fountains, nor are we shocked at the obscurity of these fountains. pursuing the career of mahommed, or of any man who has memorably impressed his own mind or agency upon the revolutions of mankind, we feel solicitude about the circumstances which might surround his cradle to be altogether unseasonable and impertinent. whether he were born in a hovel or a palace, whether he passed his infancy in squalid poverty, or hedged around by the glittering spears of bodyguards, as mere questions of fact may be interesting; but, in the light of either accessories or counteragencies to the native majesty of the subject, are trivial and below all philosophic valuation. so with regard to the creator of lear and hamlet, of othello and macbeth; to him from whose golden urns the nations beyond the far atlantic, the multitude of the isles, and the generations unborn in australian climes, even to the realms of the rising sun (the greek: anatolai haedlioio,) must in every age draw perennial streams of intellectual life, we feel that the little accidents of birth and social condition are so unspeakably below the grandeur of the theme, are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real interest at issue, so incommensurable with any of its relations, that a biographer of shakspeare at once denounces himself as below his subject if he can entertain such a question as seriously affecting the glory of the poet. in some legends of saints, we find that they were born with a lambent circle or golden aureola about their heads. this angelic coronet shed light alike upon the chambers of a cottage or a palace, upon the gloomy limits of a dungeon, or the vast expansion of a cathedral; but the cottage, the palace, the dungeon, the cathedral, were all equally incapable of adding one ray of color or one pencil of light to the supernatural halo. having, therefore, thus pointedly guarded ourselves from misconstruction, and consenting to entertain the question as one in which we, the worshippers of shakspeare, have an interest of curiosity, but in which he, the object of our worship, has no interest of glory, we proceed to state what appears to us the result of the scanty facts surviving when collated with each other. by his mother's side, shakspeare was an authentic gentleman. by his father's he would have stood in a more dubious position; but the effect of municipal honors to raise and illustrate an equivocal rank, has always been acknowledged under the popular tendencies of our english political system. from the sort of lead, therefore, which john shakspeare took at one time amongst his fellow-townsmen, and from his rank of first magistrate, we may presume that, about the year 1568, he had placed himself at the head of the stratford community. afterwards he continued for some years to descend from this altitude; and the question is, at what point this gradual degradation may be supposed to have settled. now we shall avow it as our opinion, that the composition of society in stratford was such that, even had the shakspeare family maintained their superiority, the main body of their daily associates must still have been found amongst persons below the rank of gentry. the poet must inevitably have mixed chiefly with mechanics and humble tradesmen, for such people composed perhaps the total community. but had there even been a gentry in stratford, since they would have marked the distinctions of their rank chiefly by greater reserve of manners, it is probable that, after all, shakspeare, with his enormity of delight in exhibitions of human nature, would have mostly cultivated that class of society in which the feelings are more elementary and simple, in which the thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the restraints of factitious or conventional decorum are exchanged for the restraints of mere sexual decency. it is a noticeable fact to all who have looked upon human life with an eye of strict attention, that the abstract image of womanhood, in. its loveliness, its delicacy, and its modesty, nowhere makes itself more impressive or more advantageously felt than in the humblest cottages, because it is there brought into immediate juxtaposition with the grossness of manners, and the careless license of language incident to the fathers and brothers of the house. and this is more especially true in a nation of unaffected sexual gallantry, [endnote: 14] such as the english and the gothic races in general; since, under the immunity which their women enjoy from all servile labors of a coarse or out-of-doors order, by as much lower as they descend in the scale of rank, by so much more do they benefit under the force of contrast with the men of their own level. a young man of that class, however noble in appearance, is somewhat degraded in the eyes of women, by the necessity which his indigence imposes of working under a master; but a beautiful young woman, in the very poorest family, unless she enters upon a life of domestic servitude, (in which case her labors are light, suited to her sex, and withdrawn from the public eye,) so long in fact as she stays under her father's roof, is as perfectly her own mistress and _sui juris_ as the daughter of an earl. this personal dignity, brought into stronger relief by the mercenary employments of her male connections, and the feminine gentleness of her voice and manners, exhibited under the same advantages of contrast, oftentimes combine to make a young cottage beauty as fascinating an object as any woman of any station. hence we may in part account for the great event of shakspeare's early manhood, his premature marriage. it has always been known, or at least traditionally received for a fact, that shakspeare had married whilst yet a boy, and that his wife was unaccountably older than himself. in the very earliest biographical sketch of the poet, compiled by rowe, from materials collected by betterton the actor, it was stated, (and that statement is now ascertained to have been correct,) that he had married anne hathaway, "the daughter of a substantial yeoman." further than this nothing was known. but in september, 1836, was published a very remarkable document, which gives the assurance of law to the time and fact of this event, yet still, unless collated with another record, does nothing to lessen the mystery which had previously surrounded its circumstances. this document consists of two parts; the first, and principal, according to the logic of the case, though second according to the arrangement, being a _license_ for the marriage of william shakspeare with anne hathaway, under the condition "of _once_ asking of the bannes of matrimony," that is, in effect, dispensing with two out of the three customary askings; the second or subordinate part of the document being a _bond_ entered into by two sureties, viz.: fulke sandells and john rychardson, both described as _agricolae_ or yeomen, and both marksmen, (that is, incapable of writing, and therefore subscribing by means of _marks,_) for the payment of forty pounds sterling, in the event of shakspeare, yet a minor, and incapable of binding himself, failing to fulfil the conditions of the license. in the bond, drawn up in latin, there is no mention of shakspeare's name; but in the license, which is altogether english, _his_ name, of course, stands foremost; and as it may gratify the reader to see the very words and orthography of the original, we here extract the _operative_ part of this document, prefacing only, that the license is attached by way of explanation to the bond. "the condition of this obligation is suche, that if hereafter there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason of any precontract, &c., but that willm. shagspere, one thone ptie," [on the one party,] "and anne hathwey of stratford, in the diocess of worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony together; and in the same afterwards remaine and continew like man and wiffe. and, moreover, if the said willm. shagspere do not proceed to solemnization of mariadg with the said anne hathwey, without the consent of hir frinds;--then the said obligation" [viz., to pay forty pounds]" to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand & abide in full force and vertue." what are we to think of this document? trepidation and anxiety are written upon its face. the parties are not to be married by a special license; not even by an ordinary license; in that case no proclamation of banns, no public asking at all, would have been requisite. economical scruples are consulted; and yet the regular movement of the marriage "through the bell-ropes" [endnote: 15] is disturbed. economy, which retards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with some opposite principle which precipitates it. how is all this to be explained? much light is afforded by the date when illustrated by another document. the bond bears date on the 28th day of november, in the 25th year of our lady the queen, that is, in 1582. now the baptism of shakspeare's eldest child, susanna, is registered on the 26th of may in the year following. suppose, therefore, that his marriage was solemnized on the 1st day of december; it was barely possible that it could be earlier, considering that the sureties, drinking, perhaps, at worcester throughout the 28th of november, would require the 29th, in so dreary a season, for their return to stratford; after which some preparation might be requisite to the bride, since the marriage was _not_ celebrated at stratford. next suppose the birth of miss susanna to have occurred, like her father's, two days before her baptism, viz., on the 24th of may. from december the 1st to may the 24th, both days inclusively, are one hundred and seventy-five days; which, divided by seven, gives precisely twenty-five weeks, that is to say, six months short by one week. oh, fie, miss susanna, you came rather before you were wanted. mr. campbell's comment upon the affair is, that "_if_ this was the case, "viz., if the baptism were really solemnized on the 26th of may," the poet's first child would _appear_ to have been born only six months and eleven days after the bond was entered into. "and he then concludes that, on this assumption," miss susanna shakspeare came into the world a little prematurely." but this is to doubt where there never was any ground for doubting; the baptism was _certainly_ on the 26th of may; and, in the next place, the calculation of six months and eleven days is sustained by substituting lunar months for calendar, and then only by supposing the marriage to have been celebrated on the very day of subscribing the bond in worcester, and the baptism to have been coincident with the birth; of which suppositions the latter is improbable, and the former, considering the situation of worcester, impossible. strange it is, that, whilst all biographers have worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates or most baseless traditions in the great poet's life, realizing in a manner the chimeras of laputa, and endeavoring "to extract sunbeams from cucumbers," such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction of village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind, and even now, after the discovery of 1836, with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. for our parts, we should have been the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures at a simple case of natural frailty, youthful precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most venial, where the final intentions are honorable. but in this case there seems to have been something more in motion than passion or the ardor of youth. "i like not," says parson evans, (alluding to falstaff in masquerade,) "i like not when a woman has a great peard; i spy a great peard under her muffler." neither do we like the spectacle of a mature young woman, five years past her majority, wearing the semblance of having been led astray by a boy who had still two years and a half to run of his minority. shakspeare himself, looking back on this part of his youthful history from his maturest years, breathes forth pathetic counsels against the errors into which his own inexperience had been insnared. the disparity of years between himself and his wife he notices in a beautiful scene of the twelfth night. the duke orsino, observing the sensibility which the pretended cesario had betrayed on hearing some touching old snatches of a love strain, swears that his beardless page must have felt the passion of love, which the other admits. upon this the dialogue proceeds thus: duke. what kind of woman is't? viola. of your complexion. duke. she is not worth thee then. what years? viola. i' faith, about your years, my lord. duke. too old, by heaven. _let still the woman take an elder than herself: so wears she to him, so sways she level in her husband's heart._ for, boy, however we do praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women's are. viola. i think it well, my lord. duke. _then let thy love be younger than thyself, or thy affection cannot hold the bent;_ for women are as roses, whose fair flower, being once display'd, doth fall that very hour. these counsels were uttered nearly twenty years after the event in his own life, to which they probably look back; for this play is supposed to have been written in shakspeare's thirty-eighth year. and we may read an earnestness in pressing the point as to the _inverted_ disparity of years, which indicates pretty clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experience. but his other indiscretion, in having yielded so far to passion and opportunity as to crop by prelibation, and before they were hallowed, those flowers of paradise which belonged to his marriage day; this he adverts to with even more solemnity of sorrow, and with more pointed energy of moral reproof, in the very last drama which is supposed to have proceeded from his pen, and therefore with the force and sanctity of testamentary counsel. the tempest is all but ascertained to have been composed in 1611, that is, about five years before the poet's death; and indeed could not have been composed much earlier; for the very incident which suggested the basis of the plot, and of the local scene, viz., the shipwreck of sir george somers on the bermudas, (which were in consequence denominated the somers' islands,) did not occur until the year 1609. in the opening of the fourth act, prospero formally betrothes his daughter to ferdinand; and in doing so he pays the prince a well-merited compliment of having "worthily purchas'd" this rich jewel, by the patience with which, for her sake, he had supported harsh usage, and other painful circumstances of his trial. but, he adds solemnly, "if thou dost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite be minister'd;" in that case what would follow? "no sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall, to make this contract grow; _but barren hate, sour-ey'd disdain and discord, shall bestrew the union of your bed with weeds so loathly that you shall hate it both._ therefore take heed, as hymen's lamps shall light you." the young prince assures him in reply, that no strength of opportunity, concurring with the uttermost temptation, not "the murkiest den, the most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion our worser genius can----," should ever prevail to lay asleep his jealousy of self-control, so as to take any advantage of miranda's innocence. and he adds an argument for this abstinence, by way of reminding prospero, that not honor only, but even prudential care of his own happiness, is interested in the observance of his promise. any unhallowed anticipation would, as he insinuates, "take away the edge of that day's celebration, when i shall think, or phoebus' steeds are founder'd, or night kept chain'd below;" that is, when even the winged hours would seem to move too slowly. even thus prospero is not quite satisfied. during his subsequent dialogue with ariel, we are to suppose that ferdinand, in conversing apart with miranda, betrays more impassioned ardor than the wise magician altogether approves. the prince's caresses have not been unobserved; and thus prospero renews his warning: "look thou be true: do not give dalliance too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious, or else--good night your vow." the royal lover reassures him of his loyalty to his engagements; and again the wise father, so honorably jealous for his daughter, professes himself satisfied with the prince's pledges. now in all these emphatic warnings, uttering the language "of that sad wisdom folly leaves behind," who can avoid reading, as in subtle hieroglyphics, the secret record of shakspeare's own nuptial disappointments? we, indeed, that is, universal posterity through every age, have reason to rejoice in these disappointments; for to them, past all doubt, we are indebted for shakspeare's subsequent migration to london, and his public occupation, which, giving him a deep pecuniary interest in the productions of his pen, such as no other literary application of his powers could have approached in that day, were eventually the means of drawing forth those divine works which have survived their author for our everlasting benefit. our own reading and deciphering of the whole case is as follows. the shakspeares were a handsome family, both father and sons. this we assume upon the following grounds: first, on the presumption arising out of john shakspeare's having won the favor of a young heiress higher in rank than himself; secondly, on the presumption involved in the fact of three amongst his four sons having gone upon the stage, to which the most obvious (and perhaps in those days a _sine qua non_) recommendation would be a good person and a pleasing countenance; thirdly, on the direct evidence of aubrey, who assures us that william shakspeare was a handsome and a well-shaped man; fourthly, on the implicit evidence of the stratford monument, which exhibits a man of good figure and noble countenance; fifthly, on the confirmation of this evidence by the chandos portrait, which exhibits noble features, illustrated by the utmost sweetness of expression; sixthly, on the selection of theatrical parts, which it is known that shakspeare personated, most of them being such as required some dignity of form, viz., kings, the athletic (though aged) follower of an athletic young man, and supernatural beings. on these grounds, direct or circumstantial, we believe ourselves warranted in assuming that william shakspeare was a handsome and even noble looking boy. miss anne hathaway had herself probably some personal attractions; and, if an indigent girl, who looked for no pecuniary advantages, would probably have been early sought in marriage. but as the daughter of "a substantial yeoman," who would expect some fortune in his daughter's suitors, she had, to speak coarsely, a little outlived her market. time she had none to lose. william shakspeare pleased her eye; and the gentleness of his nature made him an apt subject for female blandishments, possibly for female arts. without imputing, however, to this anne hathaway any thing so hateful as a settled plot for insnaring him, it was easy enough for a mature woman, armed with such inevitable advantages of experience and of self-possession, to draw onward a blushing novice; and, without directly creating opportunities, to place him in the way of turning to account such as naturally offered. young boys are generally flattered by the condescending notice of grown-up women; and perhaps shakspeare's own lines upon a similar situation, to a young boy adorned with the same natural gifts as himself, may give us the key to the result: "gentle thou art, and therefore to be won; beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd; and, when a woman woos, what woman's son will sourly leave her till he have prevail'd?" once, indeed, entangled in such a pursuit, any person of manly feelings would be sensible that he had no retreat; _that_ would be--to insult a woman, grievously to wound her sexual pride, and to insure her lasting scorn and hatred. these were consequences which the gentle-minded shakspeare could not face. he pursued his good fortunes, half perhaps in heedlessness, half in desperation, until he was roused by the clamorous displeasure of her family upon first discovering the situation of their kinswoman. for such a situation there could be but one atonement, and that was hurried forward by both parties; whilst, out of delicacy towards the bride, the wedding was not celebrated in stratford, (where the register contains no notice of such an event); nor, as malone imagined, in weston-upon-avon, that being in the diocese of gloucester; but in some parish, as yet undiscovered, in the diocese of worcester. but now arose a serious question as to the future maintenance of the young people. john shakspeare was depressed in his circumstances, and he had other children besides william, viz., three sons and a daughter. the elder lives have represented him as burdened with ten; but this was an error, arising out of the confusion between john shakspeare the glover, and john shakspeare a shoemaker. this error has been thus far of use, that, by exposing the fact of two john shakspeares (not kinsmen) residing in stratford-upon-avon, it has satisfactorily proved the name to be amongst those which are locally indigenous to warwickshire. meantime it is now ascertained that john shakspeare the glover had only eight children, viz., four daughters and four sons. the order of their succession was this: joan, margaret, william, gilbert, a second joan, anne, richard, and edmund. three of the daughters, viz., the two eldest of the family, joan and margaret, together with anne, died in childhood. all the rest attained mature ages, and of these william was the eldest. this might give him some advantage in his father's regard; but in a question of pecuniary provision precedency amongst the children of an insolvent is nearly nominal. for the present john shakspeare could do little for his son; and, under these circumstances, perhaps the father of anne hathaway would come forward to assist the new-married couple. this condition of dependency would furnish matter for painful feelings and irritating words. the youthful husband, whose mind would be expanding as rapidly as the leaves and blossoms of spring-time in polar latitudes, would soon come to appreciate the sort of wiles by which he had been caught. the female mind is quick, and almost gifted with the power of witchcraft, to decipher what is passing in the thoughts of familiar companions. silent and forbearing as william shakspeare might be, anne, his staid wife, would read his secret reproaches; ill would she dissemble her wrath, and the less so from the consciousness of having deserved them. it is no uncommon case for women to feel anger in connection with one subject, and to express it in connection with another; which other, perhaps, (except as a serviceable mask,) would have been a matter of indifference to their feelings. anne would, therefore, reply to those inevitable reproaches which her own sense must presume to be lurking in her husband's heart, by others equally stinging, on his inability to support his family, and on his obligations to her father's purse. shakspeare, we may be sure, would be ruminating every hour on the means of his deliverance from so painful a dependency; and at length, after four years' conjugal discord, he would resolve upon that plan of solitary emigration to the metropolis, which, at the same time that it released him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, succeeded so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with a train of consequences so vast for all future ages. such, we are persuaded, was the real course of shakspeare's transition from school-boy pursuits to his public career. and upon the known temperament of shakspeare, his genial disposition to enjoy life without disturbing his enjoyment by fretting anxieties, we build the conclusion, that had his friends furnished him with ampler funds, and had his marriage been well assorted or happy, we--the world of posterity--should have lost the whole benefit and delight which we have since reaped from his matchless faculties. the motives which drove him _from_ stratford are clear enough; but what motives determined his course _to_ london, and especially to the stage, still remains to be explained. stratford-upon-avon, lying in the high road from london through oxford to birmingham, (or more generally to the north,) had been continually visited by some of the best comedians during shakspeare's childhood. one or two of the most respectable metropolitan actors were natives of stratford. these would be well known to the elder shakspeare. but, apart from that accident, it is notorious that mere legal necessity and usage would compel all companies of actors, upon coming into any town, to seek, in the first place, from the chief magistrate, a license for opening a theatre, and next, over and above this public sanction, to seek his personal favor and patronage. as an alderman, therefore, but still more whilst clothed with the official powers of chief magistrate, the poet's father would have opportunities of doing essential services to many persons connected with the london stage. the conversation of comedians acquainted with books, fresh from the keen and sparkling circles of the metropolis, and filled with racy anecdotes of the court, as well as of public life generally, could not but have been fascinating, by comparison with the stagnant society of stratford. hospitalities on a liberal scale would be offered to these men. not impossibly this fact might be one principal key to those dilapidations which the family estate had suffered. these actors, on _their_ part, would retain a grateful sense of the kindness they had received, and would seek to repay it to john shakspeare, now that he was depressed in his fortunes, as opportunities might offer. his eldest son, growing up a handsome young man, and beyond all doubt from his earliest days of most splendid colloquial powers, (for assuredly of _him_ it may be taken for granted), "nec licuit populis parvum te, nile, videre," would be often reproached in a friendly way for burying himself in a country life. these overtures, prompted alike by gratitude to the father, and a real selfish interest in the talents of the son, would at length take a definite shape; and, upon, some clear understanding as to the terms of such an arrangement, william shakspeare would at length, (about 1586, according to the received account, that is, in the fifth year of his married life, and the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of his age,) unaccompanied by wife or children, translate himself to london. later than 1586 it could not well be; for already in 1589 it has been recently ascertained that he held a share in the property of a leading theatre. we must here stop to notice, and the reader will allow us to notice with summary indignation, the slanderous and idle tale which represents shakspeare as having fled to london in the character of a criminal, from the persecutions of sir thomas lucy of charlecot. this tale has long been propagated under two separate impulses. chiefly, perhaps, under the vulgar love of pointed and glaring contrasts; the splendor of the man was in this instance brought into a sort of epigrammatic antithesis with the humility of his fortunes; secondly, under a baser impulse, the malicious pleasure of seeing a great man degraded. accordingly, as in the case of milton, [endnote: 16] it has been affirmed that shakspeare had suffered corporal chastisement, in fact, (we abhor to utter such words,) that he had been judicially whipped. now, first of all, let us mark the inconsistency of this tale. the poet was whipped, that is, he was punished most disproportionately, and yet he fled to avoid punishment. next, we are informed that his offence was deer-stealing, and from the park of sir thomas lucy. and it has been well ascertained that sir thomas had no deer, and had no park. moreover, deer-stealing was regarded by our ancestors exactly as poaching is regarded by us. deer ran wild in all the great forests; and no offence was looked upon as so venial, none so compatible with a noble robin-hood style of character, as this very trespass upon what were regarded as _ferae naturae_, and not at all as domestic property. but had it been otherwise, a trespass was not punishable with whipping; nor had sir thomas lucy the power to irritate a whole community like stratford-upon-avon, by branding with permanent disgrace a young man so closely connected with three at least of the best families in the neighborhood. besides, had shakspeare suffered any dishonor of that kind, the scandal would infallibly have pursued him at his very heels to london; and in that case greene, who has left on record, in a posthumous work of 1592, his malicious feelings towards shakspeare, could not have failed to notice it. for, be it remembered, that a judicial flagellation contains a twofold ignominy. flagellation is ignominious in its own nature, even though unjustly inflicted, and by a ruffian; secondly, any judicial punishment is ignominous, even though not wearing a shade of personal degradation. now a judicial flagellation includes both features of dishonor. and is it to be imagined that an enemy, searching with the diligence of malice for matter against shakspeare, should have failed, six years after the event, to hear of that very memorable disgrace which had exiled him from stratford, and was the very occasion of his first resorting to london; or that a leading company of players in the metropolis, _one of whom_, and a chief one, _was his own townsman_, should cheerfully adopt into their society, as an honored partner, a young man yet flagrant from the lash of the executioner or the beadle? this tale is fabulous, and rotten to its core; yet even this does less dishonor to shakspeare's memory than the sequel attached to it. a sort of scurrilous rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so loathsome in its brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its expression, that we shall not pollute our pages by transcribing it, has been imputed to shakspeare ever since the days of the credulous rowe. the total point of this idiot's drivel consists in calling sir thomas "an asse;" and well it justifies the poet's own remark, "let there be gall enough in thy ink, no matter though thou write with a goose pen." our own belief is, that these lines were a production of charles ii.'s reign, and applied to a sir thomas lucy, not very far removed, if at all, from the age of him who first picked up the pecious filth. the phrase "parliament _member_" we believe to be quite unknown in the colloquial use of queen elizabeth's reign. but, that we may rid ourselves once and for ever of this outrageous calumny upon shakspeare's memory, we shall pursue the story to its final stage. even malone has been thoughtless enough to accredit this closing chapter, which contains, in fact, such a superfetation of folly as the annals of human dullness do not exceed. let us recapitulate the points of the story. a baronet, who has no deer and no park, is supposed to persecute a poet for stealing these aerial deer out of this aerial park, both lying in _nephelococcygia_. the poet sleeps upon this wrong for eighteen years; but at length, hearing that his persecutor is dead and buried, he conceives bloody thoughts of revenge. and this revenge he purposes to execute by picking a hole in his dead enemy's coat-of-arms. is this coat-of-arms, then, sir thomas lucy's? why, no; malone admits that it is not. for the poet, suddenly recollecting that this ridicule would settle upon the son of his enemy, selects another coat-of-arms, with which his dead enemy never had any connection, and he spends his thunder and lighting upon this irrelevant object; and, after all, the ridicule itself lies in a welchman's mispronouncing one single heraldic term--a welchman who mispronounces all words. the last act of the poet's malice recalls to us a sort of jest-book story of an irishman, the vulgarity of which the reader will pardon in consideration of its relevancy. the irishman having lost a pair of silk stockings, mentions to a friend that he has taken steps for recovering them by an advertisement, offering a reward to the finder. his friend objects that the costs of advertising, and the reward, would eat out the full value of the silk stockings. but to this the irishman replies, with a knowing air, that he is not so green as to have overlooked _that_; and that, to keep down the reward, he had advertised the stockings as worsted. not at all less flagrant is the bull ascribed to shakspeare, when he is made to punish a dead man by personalities meant for his exclusive ear, through his coat-of-arms, but at the same time, with the express purpose of blunting and defeating the edge of his own scurrility, is made to substitute for the real arms some others which had no more relation to the dead enemy than they had to the poet himself. this is the very sublime of folly, beyond which human dotage cannot advance. it is painful, indeed, and dishonorable to human nature, that whenever men of vulgar habits and of poor education wish to impress us with a feeling of respect for a man's talents, they are sure to cite, by way of evidence, some gross instance of malignity. power, in their minds, is best illustrated by malice or by the infliction of pain. to this unwelcome fact we have some evidence in the wretched tale which we have just dismissed; and there is another of the same description to be found in all lives of shakspeare, which we will expose to the contempt of the reader whilst we are in this field of discussion, that we may not afterwards have to resume so disgusting a subject. this poet, who was a model of gracious benignity in his manners, and of whom, amidst our general ignorance, thus much is perfectly established, that the term _gentle_ was almost as generally and by prescriptive right associated with his name as the affix of _venerable_ with bede, or _judicious_ with hooker, is alleged to have insulted a friend by an imaginary epitaph beginning "_ten in the hundred_" and supposing him to be damned, yet without wit enough (which surely the stratford bellman could have furnished) for devising any, even fanciful, reason for such a supposition; upon which the comment of some foolish critic is," the _sharpness of the satire_ is said to have stung the man so much that he never forgave it. "we have heard of the sting in the tail atoning for the brainless head; but in this doggerel the tail is surely as stingless as the head is brainless. for, 1st, _ten in the hundred_ could be no reproach in shakspeare's time, any more than to call a man _three-and-a-half-per-cent_. in this present year, 1838; except, indeed, amongst those foolish persons who built their morality upon the jewish ceremonial law. shakspeare himself took ten per cent. _2dly_, it happens that john combe, so far from being the object of the poet's scurrility, or viewing the poet as an object of implacable resentment, was a stratford friend; that one of his family was affectionately remembered in shakspeare's will by the bequest of his sword; and that john combe himself recorded his perfect charity with shakspeare by leaving him a legacy of 5l sterling. and in this lies the key to the whole story. for, _3dly_, the four lines were written and printed before shakspeare was born. the name combe is a common one; and some stupid fellow, who had seen the name in shakspeare's will, and happened also to have seen the lines in a collection of epigrams, chose to connect the cases by attributing an identity to the two john combes, though at war with chronology. finally, there is another specimen of doggerel attributed to shakspeare, which is not equally unworthy of him, because not equally malignant, but otherwise equally below his intellect, no less than his scholarship; we mean the inscription on his grave-stone. this, as a sort of _siste viator_ appeal to future sextons, is worthy of the grave-digger or the parish-clerk, who was probably its author. or it may have been an antique formula, like the vulgar record of ownership in books- "anthony timothy dolthead's hook, god give him grace therein to look." thus far the matter is of little importance; and it might have been supposed that malignity itself could hardly have imputed such trash to shakspeare. but when we find, even in this short compass, scarcely wider than the posy of a ring, room found for traducing the poet's memory, it becomes important to say, that the leading sentiment, the horror expressed at any disturbance offered to his bones, is not one to which shakspeare could have attached the slightest weight; far less could have outraged the sanctities of place and subject, by affixing to any sentiment whatever (and, according to the fiction of the case, his farewell sentiment) the sanction of a curse. filial veneration and piety towards the memory of this great man, have led us into a digression that might have been unseasonable in any cause less weighty than one, having for its object to deliver his honored name from a load of the most brutal malignity. never more, we hope and venture to believe, will any thoughtless biographer impute to shakspeare the asinine doggerel with which the uncritical blundering of his earliest biographer has caused his name to be dishonored. we now resume the thread of our biography. the stream of history is centuries in working itself clear of any calumny with which it has once been polluted. most readers will be aware of an old story, according to which shakspeare gained his livelihood for some time after coming to london by holding the horses of those who rode to the play. this legend is as idle as any one of those which we have just exposed. no custom ever existed of riding on horseback to the play. gentlemen, who rode valuable horses, would assuredly not expose them systematically to the injury of standing exposed to cold for two or even four hours; and persons of inferior rank would not ride on horseback in the town. besides, had such a custom ever existed, stables (or sheds at least) would soon have arisen to meet the public wants; and in some of the dramatic sketches of the day, which noticed every fashion as it arose, this would not have been overlooked. the story is traced originally to sir william davenant. betterton the actor, who professed to have received it from him, passed it onwards to rowe, he to pope, pope to bishop newton, the editor of milton, and newton to dr. johnson. this pedigree of the fable, however, adds nothing to its credit, and multiplies the chances of some mistake. another fable, not much less absurd, represents shakspeare as having from the very first been borne upon the establishment of the theatre, and so far contradicts the other fable, but originally in the very humble character of _call-boy_ or deputy prompter, whose business it was to summon each performer according to his order of coming upon the stage. this story, however, quite as much as the other, is irreconcileable with the discovery recently made by mr. collier, that in 1589 shakspeare was a shareholder in the important property of a principal london theatre. it seems destined that all the undoubted facts of shakspeare's life should come to us through the channel of legal documents, which are better evidence even than imperial medals; whilst, on the other hand, all the fabulous anecdotes, not having an attorney's seal to them, seem to have been the fictions of the wonder maker. the plain presumption from the record of shakspeare's situation in 1589, coupled with the fact that his first arrival in london was possibly not until 1587, but according to the earliest account not before 1586, a space of time which leaves but little room for any remarkable changes of situation, seems to be, that, either in requital of services done to the players by the poet's family, or in consideration of money advanced by his father-in-law, or on account of shakspeare's personal accomplishments as an actor, and as an adapter of dramatic works to the stage; for one of these reasons, or for all of them united, william shakspeare, about the 23d year of his age, was adopted into the partnership of a respectable histrionic company, possessing a first-rate theatre in the metropolis. if 1586 were the year in which he came up to london, it seems probable enough that his immediate motive to that step was the increasing distress of his father; for in that year john shakspeare resigned the office of alderman. there is, however, a bare possibility that shakspeare might have gone to london about the time when he completed his twenty-first year, that is, in the spring of 1585, but not earlier. nearly two years after the birth of his eldest daughter susanna, his wife lay in for a second and a _last_ time; but she then brought her husband twins, a son and a daughter. these children were baptized in february of the year 1585; so that shakspeare's whole family of three children were born and baptized two months before he completed his majority. the twins were baptized by the names of hamnet and judith, those being the names of two amongst their sponsors, viz., mr. sadler and his wife. hamnet, which is a remarkable name in itself, becomes still more so from its resemblance to the immortal name of hamlet [endnote: 17] the dane; it was, however, the real baptismal name of mr. sadler, a friend of shakspeare's, about fourteen years older than himself. shakspeare's son must then have been most interesting to his heart, both as a twin child and as his only boy. he died in 1596, when he was about eleven years old. both daughters survived their father; both married; both left issue, and thus gave a chance for continuing the succession from the great poet. but all the four grandchildren died without offspring. of shakspeare personally, at least of shakspeare the man, as distinguished from the author, there remains little more to record. already in 1592, greene, in his posthumous groat's-worth of wit, had expressed the earliest vocation of shakspeare in the following sentence: "there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit the only _shakscene_ in a country!" this alludes to shakspeare's office of recasting, and even recomposing, dramatic works, so as to fit them for representation; and master greene, it is probable, had suffered in his self-estimation, or in his purse, by the alterations in some piece of his own, which the duty of shakspeare to the general interests of the theatre had obliged him to make. in 1591 it has been supposed that shakspeare wrote his first drama, the two gentlemen of verona; the least characteristically marked of all his plays, and, with the exception of love's labors lost, the least interesting. from this year, 1591 to that of 1611, are just twenty years, within which space lie the whole dramatic creations of shakspeare, averaging nearly one for every six months. in 1611 was written the tempest, which is supposed to have been the last of all shakspeare's works. even on that account, as mr. campbell feelingly observes, it has "a sort of sacredness;" and it is a most remarkable fact, and one calculated to make a man superstitious, that in this play the great enchanter prospero, in whom," _as if conscious_, "says mr. campbell," _that this would be his last work_, the poet has been _inspired to typify himself as_ a wise, potent, and _benevolent magician_" of whom, indeed, as of shakspeare himself, it may be said, that "within that circle" (the circle of his own art)" none durst tread but he, "solemnly and for ever renounces his mysterious functions, symbolically breaks his enchanter's wand, and declares that he will bury his books, his science, and his secrets, "deeper than did ever plummet sound." nay, it is even ominous, that in this play, and from the voice of prospero, issues that magnificent prophecy of the total destruction which should one day swallow up "the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea all which it inherit." and this prophecy is followed immediately by a most profound ejaculation, gathering into one pathetic abstraction the total philosophy of life: "we are such stuff as dreams are made of; and our little life is rounded by a sleep;" that is, in effect, our life is a little tract of feverish vigils, surrounded and islanded by a shoreless ocean of sleep--sleep before birth, sleep after death. these remarkable passages were probably not undesigned; but if we suppose them to have been thrown off without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, according to the superstition of the ancient grecians, they would have been regarded as prefiguring words, prompted by the secret genius that accompanies every man, such as insure along with them their own accomplishment. with or without intention, however, it is believed that shakspeare wrote nothing more after this exquisite romantic drama. with respect to the remainder of his personal history, dr. drake and others have supposed, that during the twenty years from 1591 to 1611, he visited stratford often, and latterly once a year. in 1589 he had possessed some share in a theatre; in 1596 he had a considerable share. through lord southampton, as a surviving friend of lord essex, who was viewed as the martyr to his scottish politics, there can be no doubt that shakspeare had acquired the favor of james i.; and accordingly, on the 29th of may, 1603, about two months after the king's accession to the throne of england, a patent was granted to the company of players who possessed the globe theatre; in which patent shakspeare's name stands second. this patent raised the company to the rank of his majesty's servants, whereas previously they are supposed to have been simply the servants of the lord chamberlain. perhaps it was in grateful acknowledgment of this royal favor that shakspeare afterwards, in 1606, paid that sublime compliment to the house of stuart, which is involved in the vision shown to macbeth. this vision is managed with exquisite skill. it was impossible to display the whole series of princes from macbeth to james i.; but he beholds the posterity of banquo, one "gold-bound brow" succeeding to another, until he comes to an eighth apparition of a scottish king, "who bears a glass which shows him many more; and some he sees who twofold balls and treble sceptres carry;" thus bringing down without tedium the long succession to the very person of james i., by the symbolic image of the two crowns united on one head. about the beginning of the century shakspeare had become rich enough to purchase the best house in stratford, called _the great house_, which name he altered to _new place_; and in 1602 he bought one hundred and seven acres adjacent to this house for a sum (320l) corresponding to about 1500 guineas of modern money. malone thinks that he purchased the house as early as 1597; and it is certain that about that time he was able to assist his father in obtaining a renewed grant of arms from the herald's college, and therefore, of course, to re-establish his father's fortunes. ten years of well-directed industry, viz., from 1591 to 1601, and the prosperity of the theatre in which he was a proprietor, had raised him to affluence; and after another ten years, improved with the same success, he was able to retire with an income of 300l, or (according to the customary computations) in modern money of 1500l, per annum. shakspeare was in fact the first man of letters, pope the second, and sir walter scott the third, who, in great britain, has ever realized a large fortune by literature; or in christendom, if we except voltaire, and two dubious cases in italy. the four or five latter years of his life shakspeare passed in dignified ease, in profound meditation, we may be sure, and in universal respect, at his native town of stratford; and there he died, on the 23d of april, 1616. [endnote: 18] his daughter susanna had been married on the 5th of june of the year 1607, to dr. john hall, [endnote: 19] a physician in stratford. the doctor died in november, 1635, aged sixty; his wife, at the age of sixty-six, on july 11, 1640. they had one child, a daughter, named elizabeth, born in 1608, married april 22, 1626, to thomas nashe, esq., left a widow in 1647, and subsequently remarried to sir john barnard; but this lady barnard, the sole grand-daughter of the poet, had no children by either marriage. the other daughter, judith, on february 10, 1616, (about ten weeks before her father's death,) married mr. thomas quincy of stratford, by whom she had three sons, shakspeare, richard, and thomas. judith was about thirty-one years old at the time of her marriage; and living just forty-six years afterwards, she died in february, 1662, at the age of seventy-seven. her three sons died without issue; and thus, in the direct lineal descent, it is certain that no representative has survived of this transcendent poet, the most august amongst created intellects. after this review of shakspeare's life, it becomes our duty to take a summary survey of his works, of his intellectual powers, and of his station in literature, a station which is now irrevocably settled, not so much (which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance of favorable suffrages, as by acclamation; not so much by the _voices_ of those who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, as by the _acts_ of those who everywhere seek for his works among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and crave them as they do their daily bread; not so much by eulogy openly proclaiming itself, as by the silent homage recorded in the endless multiplication of what he has bequeathed us; not so much by his own compatriots, who, with regard to almost every other author, [endnote: 20] compose the total amount of his _effective_ audience, as by the unanimous "all hail!" of intellectual christendom; finally, not by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor by the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same modes of feeling and of thinking with himself,--but by the solemn award of generation succeeding to generation, of one age correcting the obliquities or peculiarities of another; by the verdict of two hundred and thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very _latest_ of his creations, or of two hundred and forty-seven years if we date from the earliest; a verdict which has been continually revived and re-opened, probed, searched, vexed, by criticism in every spirit, from the most genial and intelligent, down to the most malignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads and great ignorance could suggest when cooperating with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities; a verdict, in short, sustained and countersigned by a longer series of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learning, than were ever before congregated upon any inquest relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient [endnote: 21] or modern, pagan or christian. it was a most witty saying with respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who made a trade of insulting the memories of deceased authors by forged writings, that he was "among the new terrors of death." but in the gravest sense it may be affirmed of shakspeare, that he is among the modern luxuries of life; that life, in fact, is a new thing, and one more to be coveted, since shakspeare has extended the domains of human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers into regions not so much as dimly descried or even suspected before his time, far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty and tropical luxuriance of life. for instance,--a single instance, indeed one which in itself is a world of new revelation, --the possible beauty of the female character had not been seen as in a dream before shakspeare called into perfect life the radiant shapes of desdemona, of imogene, of hermione, of perdita, of ophelia, of miranda, and many others. the una of spenser, earlier by ten or fifteen years than most of these, was an idealized portrait of female innocence and virgin purity, but too shadowy and unreal for a dramatic reality. and as to the grecian classics, let not the reader imagine for an instant that any prototype in this field of shakspearian power can be looked for there. the _antigone_ and the _electra_ of the tragic poets are the two leading female characters that classical antiquity offers to our respect, but assuredly not to our impassioned love, as disciplined and exalted in the school of shakspeare. they challenge our admiration, severe, and even stern, as impersonations of filial duty, cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old man; or of sisterly affection, maintaining the rights of a brother under circumstances of peril, of desertion, and consequently of perfect self-reliance. iphigenia, again, though not dramatically coming before us in her own person, but according to the beautiful report of a spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to forget, by a single indecorous gesture, or so much as a moment's neglect of her own princely descent, and that she herself was "a lady in the land." these are fine marble groups, but they are not the warm breathing realities of shakspeare; there is "no speculation" in their cold marble eyes; the breath of life is not in their nostrils; the fine pulses of womanly sensibilities are not throbbing in their bosoms. and besides this immeasurable difference between the cold moony reflexes of life, as exhibited by the power of grecian art, and the true sunny life of shakspeare, it must he observed that the antigones, &c. of the antique put forward but one single trait of character, like the aloe with its single blossom. this solitary feature is presented to us as an abstraction, and as an insulated quality; whereas in shakspeare all is presented in the _concrete_; that is to say, not brought forward in relief, as by some effort of an anatomical artist; but embodied and imbedded, so to speak, as by the force of a creative nature, in the complex system of a human life; a life in which all the elements move and play simultaneously, and with something more than mere simultaneity or co-existence, acting and re-acting each upon the other, nay, even acting by each other and through each other. in shakspeare's characters is felt for ever a real _organic_ life, where each is for the whole and in the whole, and where the whole is for each and in each. they only are real incarnations. the greek poets could not exhibit any approximations to _female_ character, without violating the truth of grecian life, and shocking the feelings of the audience. the drama with the greeks, as with us, though much less than with us, was a picture of human life; and that which could not occur in life could not wisely be exhibited on the stage. now, in ancient greece, women were secluded from the society of men. the conventual sequestration of the hareem, or female apartment [endnote: 22] of the house, and the mahommedan consecration of its threshold against the ingress of males, had been transplanted from asia into greece thousands of years perhaps before either convents or mahommed existed. thus barred from all open social intercourse, women could not develop or express any character by word or action. even to _have_ a character, violated, to a grecian mind, the ideal portrait of feminine excellence; whence, perhaps, partly the too generic, too little individualized, style of grecian beauty. but prominently to _express_ a character was impossible under the common tenor of grecian life, unless when high tragical catastrophes transcended the decorums of that tenor, or for a brief interval raised the curtain which veiled it. hence the subordinate part which women play upon the greek stage in all but some half dozen cases. in the paramount tragedy on that stage, the model tragedy, the (_oedipus tyrannus_ of sophocles), there is virtually no woman at all; for jocasta is a party to the story merely as the dead laius or the self-murdered sphinx was a party, viz., by her contributions to the fatalities of the event, not by anything she does or says spontaneously. in fact, the greek poet, if a wise poet, could not address himself genially to a task in which he must begin by shocking the sensibilities of his countrymen. and hence followed, not only the dearth of female characters in the grecian drama, but also a second result still more favorable to the sense of a new power evolved by shakspeare. whenever the common law of grecian life did give way, it was, as we have observed, to the suspending force of some great convulsion or tragical catastrophe. this for a moment (like an earthquake in a nunnery) would set at liberty even the timid, fluttering grecian women, those doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of them into action. but which? precisely those of energetic and masculine minds; the timid and feminine would but shrink the more from public gaze and from tumult. thus it happened, that such female characters as _were_ exhibited in greece, could not but be the harsh and the severe. if a gentle ismene appeared for a moment in contest with some energetic sister antigone, (and chiefly, perhaps, by way of drawing out the fiercer character of that sister,) she was soon dismissed as unfit for scenical effect. so that not only were female characters few, but, moreover, of these few the majority were but repetitions of masculine qualities in female persons. female agency being seldom summoned on the stage, except when it had received a sort of special dispensation from its sexual character, by some terrific convulsions of the house or the city, naturally it assumed the style of action suited to these circumstances. and hence it arose, that not woman as she differed from man, but woman as she resembled man--woman, in short, seen under circumstances so dreadful as to abolish the effect of sexual distinction, was the woman of the greek tragedy. [endnote: 23] and hence generally arose for shakspeare the wider field, and the more astonishing by its perfect novelty, when he first introduced female characters, not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine characters, a medea or clytemnestra, or a vindictive hecuba, the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female characters that had the appropriate beauty of female nature; woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but woman "after her kind"--the other hemisphere of the dramatic world; woman, running through the vast gamut of womanly loveliness; woman, as emancipated, exalted, ennobled, under a new law of christian morality; woman, the sister and coequal of man, no longer his slave, his prisoner, and sometimes his rebel." it is a far cry to loch awe; "and from the athenian stage to the stage of shakspeare, it may be said, is a prodigious interval. true; but prodigious as it is, there is really nothing between them. the roman stage, at least the tragic stage, as is well known, was put out, as by an extinguisher, by the cruel amphitheatre, just as a candle is made pale and ridiculous by daylight. those who were fresh from the real murders of the bloody amphitheatre regarded with contempt the mimic murders of the stage. stimulation too coarse and too intense had its usual effect in making the sensibilities callous. christian emperors arose at length, who abolished the amphitheatre in its bloodier features. but by that time the genius of the tragic muse had long slept the sleep of death. and that muse had no resurrection until the age of shakspeare. so that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and upwards separates shakspeare from euripides, the last of the surviving greek tragedians, the one is still the nearest successor of the other, just as connaught and the islands in clew bay are next neighbors to america, although three thousand watery columns, each of a cubic mile in dimensions, divide them from each other. a second reason, which lends an emphasis of novelty and effective power to shakspeare's female world, is a peculiar fact of contrast which exists between that and his corresponding world of men. let us explain. the purpose and the intention of the grecian stage was not primarily to develop human _character_, whether in men or in women: human _fates_ were its object; great tragic situations under the mighty control of a vast cloudy destiny, dimly descried at intervals, and brooding over human life by mysterious agencies, and for mysterious ends. man, no longer the representative of an august _will_, man the passion-puppet of fate, could not with any effect display what we call a character, which is a distinction between man and man, emanating originally from the will, and expressing its determinations, moving under the large variety of human impulses. the will is the central pivot of character; and this was obliterated, thwarted, cancelled, by the dark fatalism which brooded over the grecian stage. that explanation will sufficiently clear up the reason why marked or complex variety of character was slighted by the great principles of the greek tragedy. and every scholar who has studied that grand drama of greece with feeling,--that drama, so magnificent, so regal, so stately,--and who has thoughtfully investigated its principles, and its difference from the english drama, will acknowledge that powerful and elaborate character, character, for instance, that could employ the fiftieth part of that profound analysis which has been applied to hamlet, to falstaff, to lear, to othello, and applied by mrs. jamieson so admirably to the full development of the shakspearian heroines, would have been as much wasted, nay, would have been defeated, and interrupted the blind agencies of fate, just in the same way as it would injure the shadowy grandeur of a ghost to individualize it too much. milton's angels are slightly touched, superficially touched, with differences of character; but they are such differences, so simple and general, as are just sufficient to rescue them from the reproach applied to virgil's "_fortemque gyan, forlemque cloanthem;_" just sufficient to make them knowable apart. pliny speaks of painters who painted in one or two colors; and, as respects the angelic characters, milton does so; he is _monochromatic_. so, and for reasons resting upon the same ultimate philosophy, were the mighty architects of the greek tragedy. they also were monochromatic; they also, as to the characters of their persons, painted in one color. and so far there might have been the same novelty in shakspeare's men as in his women. there _might_ have been; but the reason why there is _not_, must be sought in the fact, that history, the muse of history, had there even been no such muse as melpomene, would have forced us into an acquaintance with human character. history, as the representative of actual life, of real man, gives us powerful delineations of character in its chief agents, that is, in men; and therefore it is that shakspeare, the absolute creator of female character, was but the mightiest of all painters with regard to male character. take a single instance. the antony of shakspeare, immortal for its execution, is found, after all, as regards the primary conception, in history. shakspeare's delineation is but the expansion of the germ already preexisting, by way of scattered fragments, in cicero's philippics, in cicero's letters, in appian, &c. but cleopatra, equally fine, is a pure creation of art. the situation and the scenic circumstances belong to history, but the character belongs to shakspeare. in the great world, therefore, of woman, as the interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely satellite of man, shakspeare stands not the first only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, _this_ is one great field of his power. the supernatural world, the world of apparitions, _that_ is another. for reasons which it would be easy to give, reasons emanating from the gross mythology of the ancients, no grecian, [endnote: 24] no roman, could have conceived a ghost. that shadowy conception, the protesting apparition, the awful projection of the human conscience, belongs to the christian mind. and in all christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but shakspeare has found the power for effectually working this mysterious mode of being? in summoning back to earth "the majesty of buried denmark," how like an awful necromancer does shakspeare appear! all the pomps and grandeurs which religion, which the grave, which the popular superstition had gathered about the subject of apparitions, are here converted to his purpose, and bend to one awful effect. the wormy grave brought into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn; the trumpet of resurrection suggested, and again as an antagonist idea to the crowing of the cock, (a bird ennobled in the christian mythus by the part he is made to play at the crucifixion;) its starting "as a guilty thing" placed in opposition to its majestic expression of offended dignity when struck at by the partisans of the sentinels; its awful allusions to the secrets of its prison-house; its ubiquity, contrasted with its local presence; its aerial substance, yet clothed in palpable armor; the heart-shaking solemnity of its language, and the appropriate scenery of its haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital fortress, with no witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting guard at the dead of night,--what a mist, what a _mirage_ of vapor, is here accumulated, through which the dreadful being in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions, than could have happened had it been insulated and left naked of this circumstantial pomp! in the _tempest_, again, what new modes of life, preternatural, yet far as the poles from the spiritualities of religion! ariel in antithesis to caliban! what is most ethereal to what is most animal! a phantom of air, an abstraction of the dawn and of vesper sun-lights, a bodiless sylph on the one hand; on the other a gross carnal monster, like the miltonic asmodai, "the fleshliest incubus" among the fiends, and yet so far ennobled into interest by his intellectual power, and by the grandeur of misanthropy! [endnote: 25] in the _midsummer-night's dream_, again, we have the old traditional fairy, a lovely mode of preternatural life, remodified by shakspeare's eternal talisman. oberon and titania remind us at first glance of ariel. they approach, but how far they recede. they are like--"like, but, oh, how different!" and in no other exhibition of this dreamy population of the moonlight forests and forest-lawns, are the circumstantial proprieties of fairy life so exquisitely imagined, sustained, or expressed. the dialogue between oberon and titania is, of itself, and taken separately from its connection, one of the most delightful poetic scenes that literature affords. the witches in macbeth are another variety of supernatural life, in which shakspeare's power to enchant and to disenchant are alike portentous. the circumstances of the blasted heath, the army at a distance, the withered attire of the mysterious hags, and the choral litanies of their fiendish sabbath, are as finely imagined in their kind as those which herald and which surround the ghost in hamlet. there we see the _positive_ of shakspeare's superior power. but now turn and look to the _negative_. at a time when the trials of witches, the royal book on demonology, and popular superstition (all so far useful, as they prepared a basis of undoubting faith for the poet's serious use of such agencies) had degraded and polluted the ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean associations, shakspeare does not fear to employ them in high tragedy, (a tragedy moreover which, though not the very greatest of his efforts as an intellectual whole, nor as a struggle of passion, is _among_ the greatest in any view, and positively _the_ greatest for scenical grandeur, and in that respect makes the nearest approach of all english tragedies to the grecian model;) he does not fear to introduce, for the same appalling effect as that for which aeschylus introduced the eumenides, a triad of old women, concerning whom an english wit has remarked this grotesque peculiarity in the popular creed of that day,--that although potent over winds and storms, in league with powers of darkness, they yet stood in awe of the constable,--yet relying on his own supreme power to disenchant as well as to enchant, to create and to uncreate, he mixes these women and their dark machineries with the power of armies, with the agencies of kings, and the fortunes of martial kingdoms. such was the sovereignty of this poet, so mighty its compass! a third fund of shakspeare's peculiar power lies in his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. from his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. but this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the prerogative of shakspeare to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon shakspeare's shield. fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, _barely_ indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of shakspeare's dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not attracted any special or separate notice. we allude to the forms of life, and natural human passion, as apparent in the structure of his dialogue. among the many defects and infirmities of the french and of the italian drama, indeed, we may say of the greek, the dialogue proceeds always by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but never modified in its several openings by the momentary effect of its several terminal forms immediately preceding. now, in shakspeare, who first set an example of that most important innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. every form of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short, all modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement, --these are as rife in shakspeare's dialogue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need not say. a volume might be written illustrating the vast varieties of shakspeare's art and power in this one field of improvement; another volume might be dedicated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages of france and italy. and we may truly say, that were shakspeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great immortality. the dramatic works of shakspeare generally acknowledged to be genuine consist of thirty-five pieces. the following is the chronological order in which they are supposed to have been written, according to mr. malone, as given in his second edition of shakspeare, and by mr. george chalmers in his supplemental apology for the believers in the shakspeare papers: chalmers. malone. 1. the comedy of errors, 1591 1592 2. love's labors lost, 1592 1594 3. romeo and juliet, 1592 1596 4. henry vi., the first part, 1593 1589 5. henry vi., the second part, 1595 1591 6. henry vl, the third part, 1595 1591 7. the two gentlemen of verona, 1595 1591 8. richard iii., 1596 1593 9. richard ii, 1596 1593 10. the merry wives of windsor, 1596 1601 11. henry iv., the first part, 1597 1597 12. henry iv., the second part, 1597 1599 13. henry v., 1597 1599 14. the merchant of venice, 1597 1594 15. hamlet, 1598 1600 16. king john, 1598 1596 17. a midsummer-night's dream, 1598 1594 18. the taming of the shrew, 1599 1596 19. all's well that ends well, 1599 1606 20. much ado about nothing, 1599 1600 21. as you like it, 1602 1599 22. troilus and cressida, 1610 1602 23. timon of athens, 1611 1610 24. the winter's tale, 1601 1611 25. measure for measure, 1604 1603 26. king lear, 1605 1605 27. cymbeline, 1606 1609 28. macbeth, 1606 1606 29. julius caesar, 1607 1607 30. antony and cleopatra, 1608 1608 31. coriolanus, 1619 1610 32. the tempest, 1613 1611 33. the twelfth night, 1613 1607 34. henry viii., 1613 1603 35. othello, 1614 1604 pericles and titus andronicus, although inserted in all the late editions of shakspeare's plays, are omitted in the above list, both by malone and chalmers, as not being shakspeare's. the first edition of the works was published in 1623, in a folio volume, entitled mr. william shakspeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies. the second edition was published in 1632, the third in 1664, and the fourth in 1685, all in folio; but the edition of 1623 is considered the most authentic. rowe published an edition in seven vols. 8vo, in 1709. editions were published by pope, in six vols. 4to, in 1725; by warburton, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1747; by dr. johnson, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1765; by stevens, in four vols. 8vo, in 1766; by malone, in ten vols. 8vo, in 1789; by alexander chalmers, in nine vols. 8vo, in 1811; by johnson and stevens, revised by isaac reed, in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1813; and the plays and poems, with notes by malone, were edited by james boswell, and published in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1821. besides these, numerous editions have been published from time to time. notes. note 1. mr. campbell, the latest editor of shakspeare's dramatic works, observes that "the poet's name has been variously written shax-peare, shackspeare, shakspeare, and shakspere;" to which varieties might be added shagspere, from the worcester marriage license, published in 1836. but the fact is, that by combining with all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in spelling the second, more than twenty-five distinct varieties of the name may be expanded, (like an algebraic series,) for the choice of the curious in mis-spelling. above all things, those varieties which arise from the intercalation of the middle _e, _(that is, the _e_ immediately before the final syllable _spear,_) can never be overlooked by those who remember, at the opening of the dunciad, the note upon this very question about the orthography of shakspeare's name, as also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal satire, whether it ought not to have been the dunceiade, seeing that dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter _e._ meantime we must remark, that the first three of mr. campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press; as is shagspere; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety arose out of the gross clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping _"marksmen"_ who rode over to worcester for the license; and one cannot forbear laughing at the bishop's secretary for having been so misled by two varlets, professedly incapable of signing their own names. the same drunken villains had cut down the bride's name _hathaway_ into _hathwey._ finally, to treat the matter with seriousness, sir frederick madden has shown, in his recent letter to the society of antiquaries, that the poet himself in all probability _wrote_ the name uniformly _shakspere._ orthography, both of proper names, of appellatives, and of words universally, was very unsettled up to a period long subsequent to that of shakspeare. still it must usually have happened that names written variously and laxly by others, would be written uniformly by the owners; especially by those owners who had occasion to sign their names frequently, and by literary people, whose attention was often, as well as consciously, directed to the proprieties of spelling. _shakspeare_ is now too familiar to the eye for any alteration to be attempted; but it is pretty certain that sir frederick madden is right in stating the poet's own signature to have been uniformly _shakspere._ it is so written twice in the course of his will, and it is so written on a blank leaf of florio's english translation of montaigne's essays; a book recently discovered, and sold, on account of its autograph, for a hundred guineas. note 2. but, as a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it was not thought pious to "tempt god," as it were, by delay, edward vi., the only son of henry viii., was born on the 12th day of october in the year 1537. and there was a delay on account of the sponsors, since the birth was not in london. yet how little that delay was made, may be seen by this fact: the birth took place in the dead of the night, the day was friday; and yet, in spite of all delay, the christening was most pompously celebrated on the succeeding monday. and prince arthur, the elder brother of henry viii., was christened on the very next sunday succeeding to his birth, notwithstanding an inevitable delay, occasioned by the distance of lord oxford, his godfather, and the excessive rains, which prevented the earl being reached by couriers, or himself reaching winchester, without extraordinary exertions. note 3. a great modern poet refers to this very case of music entering "the mouldy chambers of the dull idiot's brain;" but in support of what seems to us a baseless hypothesis. note 4. probably addison's fear of the national feeling was a good deal strengthened by his awe of milton and of dryden, both of whom had expressed a homage towards shakspeare which language cannot transcend. amongst his political friends also were many intense admirers of shakspeare. note 5. he who is weak enough to kick and spurn his own native literature, even if it were done with more knowledge than is shown by lord shaftesbury, will usually be kicked and spurned in his turn; and accordingly it has been often remarked, that the characteristics are unjustly neglected in our days. for lord shaftesbury, with all his pedantry, was a man of great talents. leibnitz had the sagacity to see this through the mists of a translation. note 6. perhaps the most bitter political enemy of charles i. will have the candor to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly and eminently accomplished. his knowledge of the arts was considerable; and, as a patron of art, he stands foremost amongst all british sovereigns to this hour. he said truly of himself, and wisely as to the principle, that he understood english law as well as a gentleman ought to understand it; meaning that an attorney's minute knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illiberal. speaking of him as an author, we must remember that the _eikon basilike_ is still unappropriated; that question is still open. but supposing the king's claim negatived, still, in his controversy with henderson, in his negotiations at the isle of wight and elsewhere, he discovered a power of argument, a learning, and a strength of memory, which are truly admirable; whilst the whole of his accomplishments are recommended by a modesty and a humility as rare as they are unaffected. note 7. the necessity of compression obliges us to omit many arguments and references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that shakspeare's reputation was always in a progressive state; allowing only for the interruption of about seventeen years, which this poet, in common with all others, sustained, not so much from the state of war, (which did not fully occupy four of those years,) as from the triumph of a gloomy fanaticism. deduct the twenty-three years of the seventeenth century, which had elapsed before the first folio appeared, to this space add seventeen years of fanatical madness, during fourteen of which _all_ dramatic entertainments were suppressed, the remainder is sixty years. and surely the sale of four editions of a vast folio in that space of time was an expression of an abiding interest. _no other poet, except spenser, continued to sell throughout the century_. besides, in arguing the case of a _dramatic_ poet, we must bear in mind, that although readers of learned books might be diffused over the face of the land, the readers of poetry would be chiefly concentred in the metropolis; and such persons would have no need to buy what they heard at the theatres. but then comes the question, whether shakspeare kept possession of the theatres. and we are really humiliated by the gross want of sense which has been shown, by malone chiefly, but also by many others, in discussing this question. from the restoration to 1682, says malone, no more than four plays of shakspeare's were performed by a principal company in london. "such was the lamentable taste of those times, that the plays of fletcher, jonson, and shirley, were much oftener exhibited than those of our author." what cant is this! if that taste were "lamentable," what are we to think of our own times, when plays a thousand times below those of fletcher, or even of shirley, continually displace shakspeare? shakspeare would himself have exulted in finding that he gave way only to dramatists so excellent. and, as we have before observed, both then and now, it is the very familiarity with shakspeare, which often banishes him from audiences honestly in quest of relaxation and amusement. novelty is the very soul of such relaxation; but in our closets, when we are _not_ unbending, when our minds are in a state of tension from intellectual cravings, then it is that we resort to shakspeare; and oftentimes those who honor him most, like ourselves, are the most impatient of seeing his divine scenes disfigured by unequal representation, (good, perhaps, in a single personation, bad in all the rest;) or to hear his divine thoughts mangled in the recitation; or, (which is worst of all,) to hear them dishonored and defeated by imperfect apprehension in the audience, or by defective sympathy. meantime, if one theatre played only four of shakspeare's dramas, another played at least seven. but the grossest folly of malone is, in fancying the numerous alterations so many insults to shakspeare, whereas they expressed as much homage to his memory as if the unaltered dramas had been retained. the substance _was_ retained. the changes were merely concessions to the changing views of scenical propriety; sometimes, no doubt, made with a simple view to the revolution effected by davenant at the restoration, in bringing _scenes_(in the painter's sense) upon the stage; sometimes also with a view to the altered fashions of the audience during the suspensions of the action, or perhaps to the introduction of _after-pieces,_ by which, of course, the time was abridged for the main performance. a volume might be written upon this subject. meantime let us never be told, that a poet was losing, or had lost his ground, who found in his lowest depression, amongst his almost idolatrous supporters, a great king distracted by civil wars, a mighty republican poet distracted by puritanical fanaticism, the greatest successor by far of that great poet, a papist and a bigoted royalist, and finally, the leading actor of the century, who gave and reflected the ruling impulses of his age. note 8. one of the profoundest tests by which we can measure the congeniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is the degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave themselves with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency of the language. _few french authors, if any, have imparted one phrase to the colloquial idiom;_ with respect to shakspeare, a large dictionary might be made of such phrases as "win golden opinions," "in my mind's eye," "patience on a monument," "o'erstep the modesty of nature," "more honor'd in the breach than in the observance," "palmy state," "my poverty and not my will consents, "and so forth, without end. this reinforcement of the general language, by aids from the mintage of shakspeare, had already commenced in the seventeenth century. note 9. in fact, by way of representing to himself the system or scheme of the english roads, the reader has only to imagine one great letter x, or a st. andrew's cross, laid down from north to south, and decussating at birmingham. even coventry, which makes a slight variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this decussation, by shifting it eastwards, is still in warwickshire. note 10. and probably so called by some remote ancestor who had emigrated from the forest of ardennes, in the netherlands, and _now_ for ever memorable to english ears from its proximity to waterloo. note 11. let not the reader impute to us the gross anachronism of making an estimate for shakspeare's days in a coin which did not exist until a century, within a couple of years, after shakspeare's birth, and did not settle to the value of twenty-one shillings until a century after his death. the nerve of such an anachronism would lie in putting the estimate into a mouth of that age. and this is precisely the blunder into which the foolish forger of vortigern, &c., has fallen. he does not indeed directly mention guineas; but indirectly and virtually he does, by repeatedly giving us accounts imputed to shakspearian contemporaries, in which the sum total amounts to 5l 5s.; or to 26l 5s.; or, again, to 17l 17s. 6d. a man is careful to subscribe 14l 14s. and so forth. but how could such amounts have arisen unless under a secret reference to guineas, which were not in existence until charles ii.'s reign; and, moreover, to guineas at their final settlement by law into twenty-one shillings each, which did not take place until george i. 's reign. note 12. thomas campbell, the poet, in his eloquent remarks on the life and writings of william shakspeare, prefixed to a popular edition of the poet's dramatic works. london, 1838. note 13. after all the assistance given to such equations between different times or different places by sir george shuckborough's tables, and other similar investigations, it is still a very difficult problem, complex, and, after all, merely tentative in the results, to assign the true value in such cases; not only for the obvious reason, that the powers of money have varied in different directions with regard to different objects, and in different degrees where the direction has on the whole continued the same, but because the very objects to be taken into computation are so indeterminate, and vary so much, not only as regards century and century, kingdom and kingdom, but also, even in the same century and the same kingdom, as regards rank and rank. that which is a mere necessary to one, is a luxurious superfluity to another. and, in order to ascertain these differences, it is an indispensable qualification to have studied the habits and customs of the several classes concerned, together with the variations of those habits and customs. note 14. never was the _esse quain videri_ in any point more strongly discriminated than in this very point of gallantry to the female sex, as between england and france. in france, the verbal homage to woman is so excessive as to betray its real purpose, viz. that it is a mask for secret contempt. in england, little is said; but, in the mean time, we allow our sovereign ruler to be a woman; which in france is impossible. even that fact is of some importance, but less so than what follows. in every country whatsoever, if any principle has a deep root in the moral feelings of the people, we may rely upon its showing itself, by a thousand evidences amongst the very lowest ranks, and in their daily intercourse, and their _undress_ manners. now in england there is, and always has been, a manly feeling, most widely diffused, of unwillingness to see labors of a coarse order, or requiring muscular exertions, thrown upon women. pauperism, amongst other evil effects, has sometimes locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of englishmen; but never at any time with such depth as to kill the root of the old hereditary manliness. sometimes at this day a gentleman, either from carelessness, or from overruling force of convenience, or from real defect of gallantry, will allow a female servant to carry his portmanteau for him; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare one. and everywhere women of all ages engage in the pleasant, nay elegant, labors of the hay field; but in great britain women are never suffered to mow, which is a most athletic and exhausting labor, nor to load a cart, nor to drive a plough or hold it. in france, on the other hand, before the revolution, (at which period the pseudo-homage, the lip-honor, was far more ostentatiously professed towards the female sex than at present,) a frenchman of credit, and vouching for his statement by the whole weight of his name and personal responsibility, (m simond, now an american citizen,) records the following abominable scene as one of no uncommon occurrence. a woman was in some provinces yoked side by side with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and m. simond protests that it excited no horror to see the driver distributing his lashes impartially between the woman and her brute yoke-fellow. so much for the wordy pomps of french gallantry. in england, we trust, and we believe, that any man, caught in such a situation, and in such an abuse of his power, (supposing the case, otherwise a possible one,) would be killed on the spot. note 15. amongst people of humble rank in england, who only were ever asked in church, until the new-fangled systems of marriage came up within the last ten or fifteen years, during the currency of the three sundays on which the banns were proclaimed by the clergyman from the reading desk, the young couple elect were said jocosely to le "hanging in the bell-ropes;" alluding perhaps to the joyous peal contingent on the final completion of the marriage. note 16. in a little memoir of milton, which the author of this article drew up some years ago for a public society, and which is printed in an abridged shape, he took occasion to remark, that dr. johnson, who was meanly anxious to revive this slander against milton, as well as some others, had supposed milton himself to have this flagellation in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one of his latin poems, where, speaking of cambridge, and declaring that he has no longer any pleasure in the thoughts of revisiting that university, he says, "nee duri libet usque minas preferre magislri, coeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo." this last line the malicious critic would translate--"and other things insufferable to a man of my temper." but, as we then observed, _ingenium_ is properly expressive of the _intellectual _ constitution, whilst it is the _moral_ constitution that suffers degradation from personal chastisement--the sense of honor, of personal dignity, of justice, &c. _indoles_ is the proper term for this latter idea; and in using the word _ingenium,_ there cannot be a doubt that milton alluded to the dry scholastic disputations, which were shocking and odious to his fine poetical genius. if, therefore, the vile story is still to be kept up in order to dishonor a great man, at any rate let it not in future be pretended that any countenance to such a slander can be drawn from the confessions of the poet himself. note 17. and singular enough it is, as well as interesting, that shakspeare had so entirely superseded to his own ear and memory the name hamnet by the dramatic name of hamlet, that in writing his will, he actually mis-spells the name of his friend sadler, and calls him hamlet. his son, however, who should have familiarized the true name to his ear, had then been dead for twenty years. note 18. "i have heard that mr. shakspeare was a natural wit, without any art at all. hee frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at stanford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of 1,000 guineas a-year, as i have heard. shakespeare, dray ton, arid ben jonson, had a merie meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for shakespear died of a feavour there contracted" (diary of the rev john ward, a m vicar of stratford upon avon, extending from 1648 to 1679, p 183 lond. 1839, 8vo) note 19. it is naturally to be supposed that dr hall would attend the sick bed of his father in law, and the discovery of this gentleman's medical diary promised some gratification to our curiosity as to the cause of shakspeare's death. unfortunately, it does not commence until the year 1617. note 20. an exception ought perhaps to be made for sir walter scott and for cervantes, but with regard to all other writers, dante, suppose, or anosto amongst italians, camoens amongst those of portugal, schiller amongst germans, however ably they may have been naturalized in foreign languages, as all of those here mentioned (excepting only anosto) have in one part of their works been most powerfully naturalized in english, it still remains true, (and the very sale of the books is proof sufficient,) that an alien author never does take root in the general sympathies out of his own country, he takes his station in libraries, he is lead by the man of learned leisure, he is known and valued by the refined and the elegant, but he is not (what shakspeare is for germany and america) in any proper sense a _popular_ favorite. note 21. it will occur to many readers, that perhaps homer may furnish the sole exception to this sweeping assertion. any _but_ homer is clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition, but even homer "with his tail on," (as the scottish highlanders say of then chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues,) musters nothing like the force which _already_ follows shakspeare, and be it remembered, that homer sleeps and has long slept as a subject of criticism or commentary, while in germany as well as england, and _now even in france_, the gathering of wits to the vast equipage of shakspeare is advancing in an accelerated ratio. there is, in fact, a great delusion current upon this subject. innumerable references to homer, and brief critical remarks on this or that pretension of homer, this or that scene, this or that passage, lie scattered over literature ancient and modern; but the express works dedicated to the separate service of homer are, after all, not many. in greek we have only the large commentary of eustathius, and the scholia of didymus, &c.; in french little or nothing before the prose translation of the seventeenth century, which pope esteemed "elegant, "and the skirmishings of madame dacier, la motte, &c.; in english, besides the various translations and their prefaces, (which, by the way, began as early as 1555,) nothing of much importance until the elaborate preface of pope to the iliad, and his elaborate postscript to the odyssey--nothing certainly before that, and very little indeed since that, except wood's essay on the life and genius of homer. on the other hand, of the books written in illustration or investigation of shakspeare, a very considerable library might be formed in england, and another in germany. note 22. apartment is here used, as the reader will observe, in its true and continental acceptation, as a division or _compartment_ of a house including many rooms; a suite of chambers, but a suite which is partitioned off, (as in palaces,) not a single chamber; a sense so commonly and so erroneously given to this word in england. note 23. and hence, by parity of reason, under the opposite circumstances, under the circumstances which, instead of abolishing, most emphatically drew forth the sexual distinctions, viz., in the _comic_ aspects of social intercourse, the reason that we see no women on the greek stage; the greek comedy, unless when it affects the extravagant fun of farce, rejects women. note 24. it may be thought, however, by some readers, that aeschylus, in his fine phantom of darius, has approached the english ghost. as a foreign ghost, we would wish (and we are sure that our excellent readers would wish) to show every courtesy and attention to this apparition of darius. it has the advantage of being royal, an advantage which it shares with the ghost of the royal dane. yet how different, how removed by a total world, from that or any of shakspeare's ghosts! take that of banquo, for instance. how shadowy, how unreal, yet how real! darius is a mere state ghost--a diplomatic ghost. but banquo--he exists only for macbeth; the guests do not see him, yet how solemn, how real, how heart--searching he is. note 25. caliban has not yet been thoroughly fathomed. for all shakspeare's great creations are like works of nature, subjects of unexhaustible study. it was this character of whom charles i. and some of his ministers expressed such fervent admiration; and, among other circumstances, most justly they admired the new language almost with which he is endowed, for the purpose of expressing his fiendish and yet carnal thoughts of hatred to his master. caliban is evidently not meant for scorn, but for abomination mixed with fear and partial respect. he is purposely brought into contrast with the drunken trinculo and stephano, with an advantageous result. he is much more intellectual than either, uses a more elevated language, not disfigured by vulgarisms, and is not liable to the low passion for plunder as they are. he is mortal, doubtless, as his "dam" (for shakspeare will not call her mother) sycorax. but he inherits from her such qualities of power as a witch could be supposed to bequeath. he trembles indeed before prospero; but that is, as we are to understand, through the moral superiority of prospero in christian wisdom; for when he finds himself in the presence of dissolute and unprincipled men, he rises at once into the dignity of intellectual power. pope. alexander lexander pope, the most brilliant of all wits who have at any period applied themselves to the poetic treatment of human manners, to the selecting from the play of human character what is picturesque, or the arresting what is fugitive, was born in the city of london on the 21st day of may, in the memorable year 1688; about six months, therefore, before the landing of the prince of orange, and the opening of that great revolution which gave the final ratification to all previous revolutions of that tempestuous century. by the "city" of london the reader is to understand us as speaking with technical accuracy of that district, which lies within the ancient walls and the jurisdiction of the lord mayor. the parents of pope, there is good reason to think, were of "gentle blood," which is the expression of the poet himself when describing them in verse. his mother was so undoubtedly; and her illustrious son, in speaking of her to lord harvey, at a time when any exaggeration was open to an easy refutation, and writing in a spirit most likely to provoke it, does not scruple to say, with a tone of dignified haughtiness not unbecoming the situation of a filial champion on behalf of an insulted mother, that by birth and descent she was not below that young lady, (one of the two beautiful miss lepels,) whom his lordship had selected from all the choir of court beauties as the future mother of his children. of pope's extraction and immediate lineage for a space of two generations we know enough. beyond that we know little. of this little a part is dubious; and what we are disposed to receive as _not_ dubious, rests chiefly on his own authority. in the prologue to his satires, having occasion to notice the lampooners of the times, who had represented his father as "a mechanic, a hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt," he feels himself called upon to state the truth about his parents; and naturally much more so at a time when the low scurrilities of these obscure libellers had been adopted, accredited, and diffused by persons so distinguished in all points of personal accomplishment and rank as lady mary wortley montagu and lord harvey: _"hard as thy heart"_ was one of the lines in their joint pasquinade, _" hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure."_ accordingly he makes the following formal statement: "mr. pope's father was of a gentleman's family in oxfordshire, the head of which was the earl of downe. his mother was the daughter of william turner, esq., of york. she had three brothers, one of whom was killed; another died in the service of king charles [meaning charles i.]; the eldest, following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in spain, left _her_ what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." the sequestrations here spoken of were those inflicted by the commissioners for the parliament; and usually they levied a fifth, or even two fifths, according to the apparent delinquency of the parties. but in such cases two great differences arose in the treatment of the royalists; first, that the report was colored according to the interest which a man possessed, or other private means for biassing the commissioners; secondly, that often, when money could not be raised on mortgage to meet the sequestration, it became necessary to sell a family estate suddenly, and. therefore in those times at great loss; so that a nominal fifth might be depressed by favor to a tenth, or raised by the necessity of selling to a half. and hence might arise the small dowry of mrs. pope, notwithstanding the family estate in yorkshire had centred in her person. but, by the way, we see from the fact of the eldest brother having sought service in spain, that mrs. pope was a papist; not, like her husband, by conversion, but by hereditary faith. this account, as publicly thrown out in the way of challenge by pope, was, however, sneered at by a certain mr. pottinger of those days, who, together with his absurd name, has been safely transmitted to posterity in connection with this single feat of having contradicted alexander pope. we read in a diary published by the microcosm," _met a large hat, with a man under it_. "and so, here, we cannot so properly say that mr. pottinger brings down the contradiction to our times, as that the contradiction brings down mr. pottinger." cousin pope, "said pottinger," had made himself out a fine pedigree, but he wondered where he got it. "and he then goes on to plead in abatement of pope's pretensions," that an old maiden aunt, equally related," (that is, standing in the same relation to himself and to the poet,) "a great genealogist, who was always talking of her family, never mentioned this circumstance." and again we are told, from another quarter, that the earl of guildford, after express investigation of this matter, "was sure that," amongst the descendants of the earls of downe, "there was none of the name of pope." how it was that lord guildford came to have any connection with the affair, is not stated by the biographers of pope; but we have ascertained that, by marriage with a female descendant from the earls of downe, he had come into possession of their english estates. finally, though it is rather for the honor of the earls of downe than of pope to make out the connection, we must observe that lord guildford's testimony, _if ever given at all_, is simply negative; he had found no proofs of the connection, but he had not found any proofs to destroy it; whilst, on the other hand, it ought to be mentioned, though unaccountably overlooked by all previous biographers, that one of pope's anonymous enemies, who hated him personally, but was apparently master of his family history, and too honorable to belie his own convictions, expressly affirms of his own authority, and without reference to any claim put forward by pope, that he was descended from a junior branch of the downe family. which testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating the probability of pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by pope to confute lord harvey. it is probable to us, that the popes, who had been originally transplanted from england to ireland, had in the person of some cadet been re-transplanted to england; and that having in that way been disconnected from all personal recognition, and all local memorials of the capital house, by this sort of _postliminium_, the junior branch had ceased to cherish the honor of a descent which was now divided from all direct advantage. at all events, the researches of pope's biographers have not been able to trace him farther back in the paternal line than to his grandfather; and he (which is odd enough, considering the popery of his descendants) was a clergyman of the established church in hampshire. this grandfather had two sons. of the eldest nothing is recorded beyond the three facts, that he went to oxford, that he died there, and that he spent the family estate. [endnote: 2] the younger son, whose name was alexander, had been sent when young, in some commercial character, to lisbon; [endnote: 3] and there it was, in that centre of bigotry, that he became a sincere and most disinterested catholic. he returned to england; married a catholic young widow; and became the father of a second alexander pope, _ultra sauromatas notus et antipodes._ by his own account to spence, pope learned "very early to read;" and writing he taught himself "by copying, from printed books;" all which seems to argue, that, as an only child, with an indolent father and a most indulgent mother, he was not molested with much schooling in his infancy. only one adventure is recorded of his childhood, viz., that he was attacked by a cow, thrown down, and wounded in the throat. pope escaped this disagreeable kind of vaccination without serious injury, and was not farther tormented by cows or schoolmasters until he was about eight years old, when the family priest, that is, we presume, the confessor of his parents, taught him, agreeably to the jesuit system, the rudiments of greek and latin concurrently. this priest was named banister; and his name is frequently employed, together with other fictitious names, by way of signature to the notes in the dunciad, an artifice which was adopted for the sake of giving a characteristic variety to the notes, according to the tone required for the illustration of the text. from his tuition pope was at length dismissed to a catholic school at twyford, near winchester. the selection of a school in this neighborhood, though certainly the choice of a catholic family was much limited, points apparently to the old hampshire connection of his father. here an incident occurred which most powerfully illustrates the original and constitutional determination to satire of this irritable poet. he knew himself so accurately, that in after times, half by way of boast, half of confession, he says, "but touch me, and no minister so sore: whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time slides into verse and hitches in a rhyme, sacred to ridicule his whole life long, and the sad burthen of some merry song." already, it seems, in childhood he had the same irresistible instinct, victorious over the strongest sense of personal danger. he wrote a bitter satire upon the presiding pedagogue, was brutally punished for this youthful indiscretion, and indignantly removed by his parents from the school. mr. roscoe speaks of pope's personal experience as necessarily unfavorable to public schools; but in reality he knew nothing of public schools. all the establishments for papists were narrow, and suited to their political depression; and his parents were too sincerely anxious for their son's religious principles to risk the contagion of protestant association by sending him elsewhere. from the scene [endnote: 4] of his disgrace and illiberal punishment, he passed, according to the received accounts, under the tuition of several other masters in rapid succession. but it is the less necessary to trouble the reader with their names, as pope himself assures us, that he learned nothing from any of them. to banister he had been indebted for such trivial elements of a schoolboy's learning as he possessed at all, excepting those which he had taught himself. and upon himself it was, and his own admirable faculties, that he was now finally thrown for the rest of his education, at an age so immature that many boys are then first entering their academic career. pope is supposed to have been scarcely twelve years old when he assumed the office of self-tuition, and bade farewell for ever to schools and tutors. such a phenomenon is at any rate striking. it is the more so, under the circumstances which attended the plan, and under the results which justified its execution. it seems, as regards the plan, hardly less strange that prudent parents should have acquiesced in a scheme of so much peril to his intellectual interests, than that the son, as regards the execution, should have justified their confidence by his final success. more especially this confidence surprises us in the father. a doating mother might shut her eyes to all remote evils in the present gratification to her affections; but pope's father was a man of sense and principle; he must have weighed the risks besetting a boy left to his own intellectual guidance; and to these risks he would allow the more weight from his own conscious defect of scholarship and inability to guide or even to accompany his son's studies. he could neither direct the proper choice of studies; nor in any one study taken separately could he suggest the proper choice of books. the case we apprehend to have been this. alexander pope, the elder, was a man of philosophical desires and unambitious character. quiet and seclusion and innocence of life,--these were what he affected for himself; and that which had been found available for his own happiness, he might reasonably wish for his son. the two hinges upon which his plans may be supposed to have turned, were, first, the political degradation of his sect; and, secondly, the fact that his son was an only child. had he been a protestant, or had he, though a papist, been burthened with a large family of children, he would doubtless have pursued a different course. but to him, and, as he sincerely hoped, to his son, the strife after civil honors was sternly barred. apostasy only could lay it open. and, as the sentiments of honor and duty in this point fell in with the vices of his temperament, high principle concurring with his constitutional love of ease, we need not wonder that he should early retire from commerce with a very moderate competence, or that he should suppose the same fortune sufficient for one who was to stand in the same position. this son was from his birth deformed. that made it probable that he might not marry. if he should, and happened to have children, a small family would find an adequate provision in the patrimonial funds; and a large one at the worst could only throw him upon the same commercial exertions to which he had been obliged himself. the roman catholics, indeed, were just then situated as our modern quakers are. law to the one, as conscience to the other, closed all modes of active employment except that of commercial industry. either his son, therefore, would be a rustic recluse, or, like himself, he would be a merchant. with such prospects, what need of an elaborate education? and where was such an education to be sought? at the petty establishments of the suffering catholics, the instruction, as he had found experimentally, was poor. at the great national establishments his son would be a degraded person; one who was permanently repelled from every arena of honor, and sometimes, as in cases of public danger, was banished from the capital, deprived of his house, left defenceless against common ruffians, and rendered liable to the control of every village magistrate. to one in these circumstances solitude was the wisest position, and the best qualification, for that was an education that would furnish aids to solitary thought. no need for brilliant accomplishments to him who must never display them; forensic arts, pulpit erudition, senatorial eloquence, academical accomplishments--these would be lost to one against whom the courts, the pulpit, the senate, the universities, were closed. nay, by possibility worse than lost; they might prove so many snares or positive bribes to apostasy. plain english, therefore, and the high thinking of his compatriot authors, might prove the best provision for the mind of an english papist destined to seclusion. such are the considerations under which we read and interpret the conduct of pope's parents; and they lead us to regard as wise and conscientious a scheme which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been pitiably foolish. and be it remembered, that to these considerations, derived exclusively from the civil circumstances of the family, were superadded others derived from the astonishing prematurity of the individual. that boy who could write at twelve years of age the beautiful and touching stanzas on solitude, might well be trusted with the superintendence of his own studies. and the stripling of sixteen, who could so far transcend in good sense the accomplished statesmen or men of the world with whom he afterwards corresponded, might challenge confidence for such a choice of books as would best promote the development of his own faculties. in reality, one so finely endowed as alexander pope, could not easily lose his way in the most extensive or ill-digested library. and though he tells atterbury, that at one time he abused his opportunities by reading controversial divinity, we may be sure that his own native activities, and the elasticity of his mind, would speedily recoil into a just equilibrium of study, under wider and happier opportunities. reading, indeed, for a person like pope, is rather valuable as a means of exciting his own energies, and of feeding his own sensibilities, than for any direct acquisitions of knowledge, or for any trains of systematic research. all men are destined to devour much rubbish between the cradle and the grave; and doubtless the man who is wisest in the choice of his books, will have read many a page before he dies that a thoughtful review would pronounce worthless. this is the fate of all men. but the reading of pope, as a general result or measure of his judicious choice, is best justified in his writings. they show him well furnished with whatsoever he wanted for matter or for embellishment, for argument or illustration, for example and model, or for direct and explicit imitation. possibly, as we have already suggested, within the range of english literature pope might have found all that he wanted. but variety the widest has its uses; and, for the extension of his influence with the polished classes amongst whom he lived, he did wisely to add other languages; and a question has thus arisen with regard to the extent of pope's attainments as a self-taught linguist. a man, or even a boy, of great originality, may happen to succeed best, in working his own native mines of thought, by his unassisted energies. here it is granted that a tutor, a guide, or even a companion, may be dispensed with, and even beneficially. but in the case of foreign languages, in attaining this machinery of literature, though anomalies even here do arise, and men there are, like joseph scaliger, who form their own dictionaries and grammars in the mere process of reading an unknown language, by far the major part of students will lose their time by rejecting the aid of tutors. as there has been much difference of opinion with regard to pope's skill in languages, we shall briefly collate and bring into one focus the stray notices. as to the french, voltaire, who knew pope personally, declared that he "could hardly _read_ it, and spoke not one syllable of the language." but perhaps voltaire might dislike pope? on the contrary, he was acquainted with his works, and admired them to the very level of their merits. speaking of him _after death_ to frederick of prussia, he prefers him to horace and boileau, asserting that, by comparison with _them_, "pope _approfondit_ ce qu'ils ont _effleura_. d'un esprit plus hardi, d'un pas plus assure, il porta le flambeau dans l'abeme de l'otre; et l'homme _avec lui seul_ apprit a se connoetre. l'art quelquefois frivole, et quelquefois divine, l'art des vers est dans pope utile au genre humain." this is not a wise account of pope, for it does not abstract the characteristic feature of his power; but it is a very kind one. and of course voltaire could not have meant any unkindness in denying his knowledge of french. but he was certainly wrong. pope, in _his_ presence, would decline to speak or to read a language of which the pronunciation was confessedly beyond him. or, if he did, the impression left would be still worse. in fact, no man ever will pronounce or talk a language which he does not use, for some part of every day, in the real intercourse of life. but that pope read french of an ordinary cast with fluency enough, is evident from the extensive use which he made of madame dacier's labors on the iliad, and still more of la valterie's prose translation of the iliad. already in the year 1718, and long before his personal knowledge of voltaire, pope had shown his accurate acquaintance with some voluminous french authors, in a way which, we suspect, was equally surprising and offensive to his noble correspondent. the duke of buckingham [endnote: 5] had addressed to pope a letter, containing some account of the controversy about homer, which had then been recently carried on in france between la motte and madame dacier. this account was delivered with an air of teaching, which was very little in harmony with its excessive shallowness. pope, who sustained the part of pupil in this interlude, replied in a manner that exhibited a knowledge of the parties concerned in the controversy much superior to that of the duke. in particular, he characterized the excellent notes upon horace of m. dacier, the husband, in very just terms, as distinguished from those of his conceited and half-learned wife; and the whole reply of pope seems very much as though he had been playing off a mystification on his grace. undoubtedly the pompous duke felt that he had caught a tartar. now m. dacier's horace, which, with the text, fills nine volumes, pope could not have read _except_ in french; for they are not even yet translated into english. besides, pope read critically the french translations of his own essay on man, essay on criticism, rape of the lock, &c. he spoke of them as a critic; and it was at no time a fault of pope's to make false pretensions. all readers of pope's satires must also recollect numerous proofs, that he had read boileau with so much feeling of his peculiar merit, that he has appropriated and naturalized in english some of his best passages. voltaire was, therefore, certainly wrong. of italian literature, meantime, pope knew little or nothing; and simply because he knew nothing of the language. tasso, indeed, he admired; and, which is singular, more than ariosto. but we believe that he had read him only in english; and it is certain that he could not take up an italian author, either in prose or verse, for the unaffected amusement of his leisure. greek, we all know has been denied to pope, ever since he translated homer, and chiefly in consequence of that translation. this seems at first sight unfair, because criticism has not succeeded in fixing upon pope any errors of ignorance. his deviations from homer were uniformly the result of imperfect sympathy with the naked simplicity of the antique, and therefore wilful deviations, not (like those of his more pretending competitors, addison and tickell) pure blunders of misapprehension. but yet it is not inconsistent with this concession to pope's merits, that we must avow our belief in his thorough ignorance of greek when he first commenced his task. and to us it seems astonishing that nobody should have adverted to that fact as a sufficient solution, and in fact the only plausible solution, of pope's excessive depression of spirits in the earliest stage of his labors. this depression, after he had once pledged himself to his subscribers for the fulfilment of his task, arose from, and could have arisen from nothing else than, his conscious ignorance of greek in connection with the solemn responsibilities he had assumed in the face of a great nation. nay, even countries as presumptuously disdainful of tramontane literature as italy took an interest in this memorable undertaking. bishop berkeley found salvini reading it at florence; and madame dacier even, who read little but greek, and certainly no english until then, condescended to study it. pope's dejection, therefore, or rather agitation (for it impressed by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his dreams, which lasted for years after the cause had ceased to operate) was perfectly natural under the explanation we have given, but not otherwise. and how did he surmount this unhappy self-distrust? paradoxical as it may sound, we will venture to say, that, with the innumerable aids for interpreting homer which even then existed, a man sufficiently acquainted with latin might make a translation even critically exact. this pope was not long in discovering. other alleviations of his labor concurred, and in a ratio daily increasing. the same formulae were continually recurring, such as, _"but him answering, thus addressed the swift-footed achilles;"_ or, _"but him sternly beholding, thus spoke agamemnon the king of men."_ then, again, universally the homeric greek, from many causes, is easy; and especially from these two: 1 _st_, the simplicity of the thought, which never gathers into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, which we find in the dramatic poets of a higher civilization. 2 _dly_, from the constant hounds set to the expansion of the thought by the form of the metre; an advantage of verse which makes the poets so much easier to a beginner in the german language than the illimitable weavers of prose. the line or the stanza reins up the poet tightly to his theme, and will not suffer him to expatiate. gradually, therefore, pope came to read the homeric greek, but never accurately; nor did he ever read eustathius without aid from latin. as to any knowledge of the attic greek, of the greek of the dramatists, the greek of plato, the greek of demosthenes, pope neither had it nor affected to have it. indeed it was no foible of pope's, as we will repeat, to make claims which he had not, or even to dwell ostentatiously upon those which he had. and with respect to greek in particular, there is a manuscript letter in existence from pope to a mr. bridges at falham, which, speaking of the original homer, distinctly records the knowledge which he had of his own "imperfectness in the language." chapman, a most spirited translator of homer, probably had no very critical skill in greek; and hobbes was, beyond all question, as poor a grecian as he was a doggerel translator; yet in this letter pope professes his willing submission to the "authority" of chapman and hobbes, as superior to his own. finally, in _latin_ pope was a "considerable proficient," even by the cautious testimony of dr. johnson; and in this language only the doctor was an accomplished critic. if pope had really the proficiency here ascribed to him, he must have had it already in his boyish years; for the translation from statius, which is the principal monument of his skill, was executed _before_ he was fourteen. we have taken the trouble to throw a hasty glance over it; and whilst we readily admit the extraordinary talent which it shows, as do all the juvenile essays of pope, we cannot allow that it argues any accurate skill in latin. the word malea, as we have seen noticed by some editor, he makes malea; which in itself, as the name was not of common occurrence, would not have been an error worth noticing; but, taken in connection with the certainty that pope had the original line before him- "arripit ex templo maleae de valle resurgens," when not merely the scanning theoretically, but the whole rhythm is practically, to the most obtuse ear, would be annihilated by pope's false quantity, is a blunder which serves to show his utter ignorance of prosody. but, even as a version of the sense, with every allowance for a poet's license of compression and expansion, pope's translation is defective, and argues an occasional inability to construe the text. for instance, at the council summoned by jupiter, it is said that he at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but not so the inferior gods; "nec protinus ausi coelicolae, veniam donee pater ipse sedendi tranquilla jubet esse manu." in which passage there is a slight obscurity, from the ellipsis of the word _sedere_, or _sese locare_; but the meaning is evidently that the other gods did not presume to sit down _protinus_, that is, in immediate succession to jupiter, and interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express permission to take their seats. but pope, manifestly unable to extract any sense from the passage, translates thus: "at jove's assent the deities around in solemn slate the consistory _crown'd_;" where at once the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities. again, at v. 178, _ruptaeque vices_ is translated," _and all the ties of nature broke_; "but by vices is indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by eteocles. other mistakes might be cited, which seem to prove that pope, like most self-taught linguists, was a very imperfect one. [endnote: 6] pope, in short, never rose to such a point in classical literature as to read either greek or latin authors without effort, and for his private amusement. the result, therefore, of pope's self-tuition appears to us, considered in the light of an attempt to acquire certain accomplishments of knowledge, a most complete failure. as a linguist, he read no language with ease; none with pleasure to himself; and none with so much accuracy as could have carried him through the most popular author with a general independence on interpreters. but, considered with a view to his particular faculties and slumbering originality of power, which required perhaps the stimulation of accident to arouse them effectually, we are very much disposed to think that the very failure of his education as an artificial training was a great advantage finally for inclining his mind to throw itself, by way of indemnification, upon its native powers. had he attained, as with better tuition he would have attained, distinguished excellence as a scholar, or as a student of science, the chances are many that he would have settled down into such studies as thousands could pursue not less successfully than he; whilst as it was, the very dissatisfaction which he could not but feel with his slender attainments, must have given him a strong motive for cultivating those impulses of original power which he felt continually stirring within him, and which were vivified into trials of competition as often as any distinguished excellence was introduced to his knowledge. pope's father, at the time of his birth, lived in lombard street; [endnote: 7] a street still familiar to the public eye, from its adjacency to some of the chief metropolitan establishments, and to the english ear possessing a degree of historical importance; first, as the residence of those lombards, or milanese, who affiliated our infant commerce to the matron splendors of the adriatic and the mediterranean; next, as the central resort of thrme jewellers, or "goldsmiths," as they were styled, who performed all the functions of modern bankers from the period of the parliamentary war to the rise of the bank of england, that is, for six years after the birth of pope; and, lastly, as the seat, until lately, of that vast post office, through which, for so long a period, has passed the correspondence of all nations and languages, upon a scale unknown to any other country. in this street alexander pope the elder had a house, and a warehouse, we presume, annexed, in which he conducted the wholesale business of a linen merchant. as soon as he had made a moderate fortune he retired from business, first to kensington, and afterwards to binfield, in windsor forest. the period of this migration is not assigned by any writer. it is probable that a prudent man would not adopt it with any prospect of having more children. but this chance might be considered as already extinguished at the birth of pope; for though his father had then only attained his forty-fourth year, mrs. pope had completed her forty-eighth. it is probable, from the interval of seven days which is said to have elapsed between pope's punishment and his removal from the school, that his parents were then living at such a distance from him as to prevent his ready communication with them, else we may be sure that mrs. pope would have flown on the wings of love and wrath to the rescue of her darling. supposing, therefore, as we _do_ suppose, that mr. bromley's school in london was the scene of his disgrace, it would appear on this argument that his parents were then living in windsor forest. and this hypothesis falls in with another anecdote in pope's life, which we know partly upon his own authority. he tells wycherley that he had seen dryden, and barely seen him. _virgilium vidi tantum_. this is presumed to have been in will's coffee-house, whither any person in search of dryden would of course resort; and it must have been before pope was twelve years old, for dryden died in 1700. now there is a letter of sir charles wogan's, stating that he first took pope to will's; and his words are, "from our forest." consequently, at that period, when he had not completed his twelfth year, pope was already living in the forest. from this period, and so long as the genial spirits of youth lasted, pope's life must have been one dream of pleasure. he tells lord harvey that his mother did not spoil him; but that was no doubt because there was no room for wilfulness or waywardness on either side, when all was one placid scene of parental obedience and gentle filial authority. we feel persuaded that, if not in words, in spirit and inclination, they would, in any notes they might have occasion to write, subscribe themselves "your dutiful parents." and of what consequence in whose hands were the reins which were never needed? every reader must be pleased to know that these idolizing parents lived to see their son at the very summit of his public elevation; even his father lived two years and a half after the publication of his homer had commenced, and when his fortune was made; and his mother lived for nearly eighteen years more. what a felicity for her, how rare and how perfect, to find that he, who to her maternal eyes was naturally the most perfect of human beings, and the idol of her heart, had already been the idol of the nation before he had completed his youth. she had also another blessing not always commanded by the most devoted love; many sons there are who think it essential to manliness that they should treat their mother's doating anxiety with levity, or even ridicule. but pope, who was the model of a good son, never swerved in words, manners, or conduct, from the most respectful tenderness, or intermitted the piety of his attentions. and so far did he carry this regard for his mother's comfort, that, well knowing how she lived upon his presence or by his image, he denied himself for many years all excursions which could not be fully accomplished within the revolution of a week. and to this cause, combined with the excessive length of his mother's life, must be ascribed the fact that pope never went abroad; not to italy with thomson or with berkeley, or any of his diplomatic friends; not to ireland, where his presence would have been hailed as a national honor; not even to france, on a visit to his admiring and admired friend lord bolingbroke. for as to the fear of sea-sickness, _that_ did not arise until a late period of his life; and at any period would not have operated to prevent his crossing from dover to calais. it is possible that, in his earlier and more sanguine years, all the perfection of his filial love may not have availed to prevent him from now and then breathing a secret murmur at confinement so constant. but it is certain that, long before he passed the meridian of his life, pope had come to view this confinement with far other thoughts. experience had then taught him, that to no man is the privilege granted of possessing more than one or two friends who are such in extremity. by that time he had come to view his mother's death with fear and anguish. she, he knew by many a sign, would have been happy to lay down her life for his sake; but for others, even those who were the most friendly and the most constant in their attentions, he felt but too certainly that his death, or his heavy affliction, might cost them a few sighs, but would not materially disturb their peace of mind. "it is but in a very narrow circle," says he, in a confidential letter, "that friendship walks in this world, and i care not to tread out of it more than i needs must; knowing well it is but to two or three, (if quite so many,) that any man's welfare or memory can be of consequence." after such acknowledgments, we are not surprised to find him writing thus of his mother, and his fearful struggles to fight off the shock of his mother's death, at a time when it was rapidly approaching. after having said of a friend's death, "the subject is beyond writing upon, beyond cure or ease by reason or reflection, beyond all but one thought, that it is the will of god," he goes on thus, "so will the death of my mother be, which now i tremble at, now resign to, now bring close to me, now set farther off; every day alters, turns me about, confuses my whole frame of mind." there is no pleasure, he adds, which the world can give "equivalent to countervail either the death of one i have so long lived with, or of one i have so long lived for." how will he comfort himself after her death? "i have nothing left but to turn my thoughts to one comfort, the last we usually think of, though the only one we should in wisdom depend upon. i sit in her room, and she is always present before me but when i sleep. i wonder i am so well. i have shed many tears; but now i weep at nothing." a man, therefore, happier than pope in his domestic relations cannot easily have lived. it is true these relations were circumscribed; had they been wider, they could not have been so happy. but pope was equally fortunate in his social relations. what, indeed, most of all surprises us, is the courteous, flattering, and even brilliant reception which pope found from his earliest boyhood amongst the most accomplished men of the world. wits, courtiers, statesmen, grandees the most dignified, and men of fashion the most brilliant, all alike treated him not only with pointed kindness, but with a respect that seemed to acknowledge him as their intellectual superior. without rank, high birth, fortune, without even a literary name, and in defiance of a deformed person, pope, whilst yet only sixteen years of age, was caressed, and even honored; and all this with no one recommendation but simply the knowledge of his dedication to letters, and the premature expectations which he raised of future excellence. sir william trumbull, a veteran statesman, who had held the highest stations, both diplomatic and ministerial, made him his daily companion. wycherley, the old _roue_ of the town, a second-rate wit, but not the less jealous on that account, showed the utmost deference to one whom, as a man of fashion, he must have regarded with contempt, and between whom and himself there were nearly "fifty good years of fair and foul weather." cromwell, [endnote: 8] a fox-hunting country gentleman, but uniting with that character the pretensions of a wit, and affecting also the reputation of a rake, cultivated his regard with zeal and conscious inferiority. nay, which never in any other instance happened to the most fortunate poet, his very inaugural essays in verse were treated, not as prelusive efforts of auspicious promise, but as finished works of art, entitled to take their station amongst the literature of the land; and in the most worthless of all his poems, walsh, an established authority, and whom dryden pronounced the ablest critic of the age, found proofs of equality with virgil. the literary correspondence with these gentlemen is interesting, as a model of what once passed for fine letter-writing. every nerve was strained to outdo each other in carving all thoughts into a fillagree work of rhetoric; and the amoebaean contest was like that between two village cocks from neighboring farms endeavoring to overcrow each other. to us, in this age of purer and more masculine taste, the whole scene takes the ludicrous air of old and young fops dancing a minuet with each other, practising the most elaborate grimaces, sinkings and risings the most awful, bows the most overshadowing, until plain walking, running, or the motions of natural dancing, are thought too insipid for endurance. in this instance the taste had perhaps really been borrowed from france, though often enough we impute to france what is the native growth of all minds placed in similar circumstances. madame de sevigne's letters were really models of grace. but balzac, whose letters, however, are not without interest, had in some measure formed himself upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of pliny and seneca. pope and his correspondents, meantime, degraded the dignity of rhetoric, by applying it to trivial commonplaces of compliment; whereas seneca applied it to the grandest themes which life or contemplation can supply. lady mary wortley montagu, on first coming amongst the wits of the day, naturally adopted their style. she found this sort of _euphuism_ established; and it was not for a very young woman to oppose it. but her masculine understanding and powerful good sense, shaken free, besides, from all local follies by travels and extensive commerce with the world, first threw off these glittering chains of affectation. dean swift, by the very constitution of his mind, plain, sinewy, nervous, and courting only the strength that allies itself with homeliness, was always indisposed to this mode of correspondence. and, finally, pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside altogether. one reason doubtless was, that he found it too fatiguing; since in this way of letter-writing he was put to as much expense of wit in amusing an individual correspondent, as would for an equal extent have sufficed to delight the whole world. a funambulist may harass his muscles and risk his neck on the tight-rope, but hardly to entertain his own family. pope, however, had another reason for declining this showy system of fencing; and strange it is that he had not discovered this reason from the very first. as life advanced, it happened unavoidably that real business advanced; the careless condition of youth prompted no topics, or at least prescribed none, but such as were agreeable to the taste, and allowed of an ornamental coloring. but when downright business occurred, exchequer bills to be sold, meetings to be arranged, negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here and there by possibility a jest or two might be scattered, a witty allusion thrown in, or a sentiment interwoven; but for the main body of the case, it neither could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by any effort of ingenuity, it _had_, could it look otherwise than silly and unreasonable: "ornari les a ipsa negat, contenta doceri." pope's idleness, therefore, on the one hand, concurring with good sense and the necessities of business on the other, drove him to quit his gay rhetoric in letter-writing. but there are passages surviving in his correspondence which indicate, that, after all, had leisure and the coarse perplexities of life permitted it, he still looked with partiality upon his youthful style, and cherished it as a first love. but in this harsh world, as the course of true love, so that of rhetoric, never did run smooth; and thus it happened that, with a lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to bid it adieu. strange that any man should think his own sincere and confidential overflowings of thought and feeling upon books, men, and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watching their prismatic hues, like an indian juggler with his cups and balls. we of this age, who have formed our notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity of gray's, the brilliancy of lady mary wortley montagu's during her later life, and the mingled good sense and fine feeling of cowper's, value only those letters of pope which he himself thought of inferior value. and even with regard to these, we may say that there is a great mistake made; the best of those later letters between pope and swift, &c., are not in themselves at all superior to the letters of sensible and accomplished women, such as leave every town in the island by every post. their chief interest is a derivative one; we are pleased with any letter, good or bad, which relates to men of such eminent talent; and sometimes the subjects discussed have a separate interest for themselves. but as to the quality of the discussion, apart from the person discussing and the thing discussed, so trivial is the value of these letters in a large proportion, that we cannot but wonder at the preposterous value which was set upon them by the writers. [endnote: 9] pope especially ought not to have his ethereal works loaded by the mass of trivial prose which is usually attached to them. this correspondence, meantime, with the wits of the time, though one mode by which, in the absence of reviews, the reputation of an author was spread, did not perhaps serve the interests of pope so effectually as the poems which in this way he circulated in those classes of english society whose favor he chiefly courted. one of his friends, the truly kind and accomplished sir william trumbull, served him in that way, and perhaps in another eventually even more important. the library of pope's father was composed exclusively of polemical divinity, a proof, by the way, that he was not a blind convert to the roman catholic faith; or, if he was so originally, had reviewed the grounds of it, and adhered to it after strenuous study. in this dearth of books at his own home, and until he was able to influence his father in buying more extensively, pope had benefited by the loans of his friends; amongst whom it is probable that sir william, as one of the best scholars of the whole, might assist him most. he certainly offered him the most touching compliment, as it was also the wisest and most paternal counsel, when he besought him, as one _goddess-born_, to quit the convivial society of deep-drinkers: "heu, fuge nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe malis." with these aids from friends of rank, and his way thus laid open to public favor, in the year 1709 pope first came forward upon the stage of literature. the same year which terminated his legal minority introduced him to the public. _miscellanies_ in those days were almost periodical repositories of fugitive verse. tonson happened at this time to be publishing one of some extent, the sixth volume of which offered a sort of ambush to the young aspirant of windsor forest, from which he might watch the public feeling. the volume was opened by mr. ambrose philips, in the character of pastoral poet; and in the same character, but stationed at the end of the volume, and thus covered by his bucolic leader, as a soldier to the rear by the file in advance, appeared pope; so that he might win a little public notice, without too much seeming to challenge it. this half-clandestine emersion upon the stage of authorship, and his furtive position, are both mentioned by pope as accidents, but as accidents in which he rejoiced, and not improbably accidents which tonson had arranged with a view to his satisfaction. it must appear strange that pope at twenty-one should choose to come forward for the first time with a work composed at sixteen. a difference of five years at that stage of life is of more effect than of twenty at a later; and his own expanding judgment could hardly fail to inform him, that his pastorals were by far the worst of his works. in reality, let us not deny, that had pope never written any thing else, his name would not have been known as a name even of promise, but would probably have been redeemed from oblivion by some satirist or writer of a dunciad. were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.," _love out of mount mlna by whirlwind_"he would suppose himself reading the racing calendar. yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the pastorals introduce us: "i know thee. love! on foreign mountains born. wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed. thou wert from aetna's burning entrails torn. got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born." but the very names "damon" and "strephon," "phillis" and "delia," are rank with childishness. arcadian life is, at the best, a feeble conception, and rests upon the false principle of crowding together all the luscious sweets of rural life, undignified by the danger which attends pastoral life in our climate, and unrelieved by shades, either moral or physical. and the arcadia of pope's age was the spurious arcadia of the opera theatre, and, what is worse, of the french opera. the hostilities which followed between these rival wooers of the pastoral muse are well known. pope, irritated at what he conceived the partiality shown to philips in the guardian, pursued the review ironically; and, whilst affecting to load his antagonist with praises, draws into pointed relief some of his most flagrant faults. the result, however, we cannot believe. that all the wits, except addison, were duped by the irony, is quite impossible. could any man of sense mistake for praise the remark, that philips had imitated "_every_ line of strada; "that he had introduced wolves into england, and proved himself the first of gardeners by making his flowers "blow all in the same season." or, suppose those passages unnoticed, could the broad sneer escape him, where pope taxes the other writer (viz., himself) with having deviated" into downright poetry; "or the outrageous ridicule of philip's style, as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral style, the quotation from gay, beginning, "rager, go vetch tha kee, or else tha zun will quite bego before ch' 'avs half a don!" philips is said to have resented this treatment by threats of personal chastisement to pope, and even hanging up a rod at button's coffee-house. we may be certain that philips never disgraced himself by such ignoble conduct. if the public indeed were universally duped by the paper, what motive had philips for resentment? or, in any case, what plea had he for attacking pope, who had not come forward as the author of the essay? but, from pope's confidential account of the matter, we know that philips saw him daily, and never offered him "any indecorum;" though, for some cause or other, pope pursued philips with virulence through life. in the year 1711, pope published his essay on criticism, which some people have very unreasonably fancied his best performance; and in the same year his rape of the lock, the most exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers. it wanted, however, as yet, the principle of its vitality, in wanting the machinery of sylphs and gnomes, with which addition it was first published in 1714. in the year 1712, pope appeared again before the public as the author of the temple of fame, and the elegy to the memory of an unfortunate lady. much speculation has arisen on the question concerning the name of this lady, and the more interesting question concerning the nature of the persecutions and misfortunes which she suffered. pope appears purposely to decline answering the questions of his friends upon that point; at least the questions have reached us, and the answers have not. joseph warton supposed himself to have ascertained four facts about her: that her name was wainsbury; that she was deformed in person; that she retired into a convent from some circumstances connected with an attachment to a young man of inferior rank; and that she killed herself, not by a sword, as the poet insinuates, but by a halter. as to the latter statement, it may very possibly be true; such a change would be a very slight exercise of the poet's privileges. as to the rest, there are scarcely grounds enough for an opinion. pope certainly speaks of her under the name of mrs. (_i. e._ miss) w--, which at least argues a poetical exaggeration in describing her as a being "that once had _titles_, honor, wealth, and fame;" and he may as much have exaggerated her pretensions to beauty. it is indeed noticeable, that he speaks simply of her _decent_ limbs, which, in any english use of the word, does not imply much enthusiasm of praise. she appears to have been the niece of a lady a--; and mr. craggs, afterwards secretary of state, wrote to lady a--on her behalf, and otherwise took an interest in her fate. as to her being a relative of the duke of buckingham's, that rests upon a mere conjectural interpretation applied to a letter of that nobleman's. but all things about this unhappy lady are as yet enveloped in mystery. and not the least part of the mystery is a letter of pope's to a mr. c--, bearing date 1732, that is, just twenty years after the publication of the poem, in which pope, in a manly tone, justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses against his unknown correspondent the very blame which he had applied generally to the kinsman of the poor victim in 1712. now, unless there is some mistake in the date, how are we to explain this gentleman's long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to pope's anathema, with which the world had resounded for twenty years? pope had now established his reputation with the public as the legitimate successor and heir to the poetical supremacy of dryden. his rape of the lock was unrivalled in ancient or modern literature, and the time had now arrived when, instead of seeking to extend his fame, he might count upon a pretty general support in applying what he had already established to the promotion of his own interest. accordingly, in the autumn of 1713, he formed a final resolution of undertaking a new translation of the iliad. it must be observed, that already in 1709, concurrently with his pastorals, he had published specimens of such a translation; and these had been communicated to his friends some time before. in particular, sir william trumbull, on the 9th of april, 1708, urged upon pope a complete translation of both iliad and odyssey. defective skill in the greek language, exaggeration of the difficulties, and the timidity of a writer as yet unknown, and not quite twenty years old, restrained pope for five years and more. what he had practised as a sort of _bravura_, for a single effort of display, he recoiled from as a daily task to be pursued through much toil, and a considerable section of his life. however, he dallied with the purpose, starting difficulties in the temper of one who wishes to hear them undervalued; until at length sir richard steele determined him to the undertaking, a fact overlooked by the biographers, but which is ascertained by ayre's account of that interview between pope and addison, probably in 1716, which sealed the rupture between them. in the autumn of 1713, he made his design known amongst his friends. accordingly, on the 21st of october, we have lord lansdown's letter, expressing his great pleasure at the communication; on the 26th, we have addison's letter encouraging him to the task; and in november of the same year occurs the amusing scene so graphically described by bishop kennet, when dean swift presided in the conversation, and, amongst other indications of his conscious authority, "instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in england was mr. pope, who had _begun_ a translation of homer into english verse, for which he must have them all subscribe; for," says he," _the author shall not begin to print until i have a thousand guineas for him_." if this were the extent of what swift anticipated from the work, he fell miserably below the result. but, perhaps, he spoke only of a cautionary _arrha_ or earnest. as this was unquestionably the greatest literary labor, as to profit, ever executed, not excepting the most lucrative of sir walter scott's, if due allowance be made for the altered value of money, and if we consider the odyssey as forming part of the labor, it may be right to state the particulars of pope's contract with lintot. the number of subscribers to the iliad was 575, and the number of copies subscribed for was 654. the work was to be printed in six quarto volumes; and the subscription was a guinea a volume. consequently by the subscription pope obtained six times 654 guineas, or 4218l. 6s., (for the guinea then passed for 21s. 6d.); and for the copyright of each volume lintot offered 200l, consequently 1200l for the whole six; so that from the iliad the profit exactly amounted to 5310l. 16s. of the odyssey, 574 copies were subscribed for. it was to be printed in five quarto volumes, and the subscription was a guinea a volume. consequently by the subscription pope obtained five times 574 guineas, or 3085l. 5s.; and for the copyright lintot offered 600l. the total sum received, therefore, by pope, on account of the odyssey, was 3685l. 5s. but in this instance he had two coadjutors, broome and fenton; between them they translated twelve books, leaving twelve to pope. the notes also were compiled by broome; but the postscript to the notes was written by pope. fenton received 300l, broome 500l. such at least is warton's account, and more probable than that of ruffhead, who not only varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum given to the assistants by 100l. thus far we had followed the guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie upon the face of the transaction. but we have since detected a written statement of pope's, unaccountably overlooked by the biographers, and serving of itself to show how negligently they have read the works of their illustrious subject. the statement is entitled to the fullest attention and confidence, not being a hasty or casual notice of the transaction, but pointedly shaped to meet a calumnious rumor against pope in his character of paymaster; as if he who had found so much liberality from publishers in his own person, were niggardly or unjust as soon as he assumed those relations to others. broome, it was alleged, had expressed himself dissatisfied with pope's remuneration. perhaps he had. for he would be likely to frame his estimate for his own services from the scale of pope's reputed gains; and those gains would, at any rate, be enormously exaggerated, as uniformly happens where there is a basis of the marvellous to begin with. and, secondly, it would be natural enough to assume the previous result from the iliad as a fair standard for computation; but in this, as we know, all parties found themselves disappointed, and broome had the less right to murmur at this, since the arrangement with himself as chief journeyman in the job was one main cause of the disappointment. there was also another reason why broome should be less satisfied than fenton. verse for verse, any one thousand lines of a translation so purely mechanical might stand against any other thousand; and so far the equation of claims was easy. a book-keeper, with a pen behind his ear, and cocker's golden rule open before him, could do full justice to mr. broome _as a poet_ every saturday night. but broome had a separate account current for pure prose against pope. one he had in conjunction with fenton for verses delivered on the premises at so much per hundred, on which there could be no demur, except as to the allowance for tare and tret as a discount in favor of pope. but the prose account, the account for notes, requiring very various degrees of reading and research, allowed of no such easy equation. there it was, we conceive, that broome's discontent arose. pope, however, declares, that he had given him 500l, thus confirming the proportions of warton against ruffhead, (that is, in effect, warburton,) and some other advantages which were not in money, nor deductions at all from his own money profits, but which may have been worth so much money to broome, as to give some colorable truth to ruffhead's allegation of an additional 100l. in direct money, it remains certain that fenton had three, and broome five hundred pounds. it follows, therefore, that for the iliad and odyssey jointly he received a sum of 8996l. 1s., and paid for assistance 800l, which leaves to himself a clear sum of 8196l. 1s. and, in fact, his profits ought to be calculated without deduction, since it was his own choice, from indolence, to purchase assistance. the iliad was commenced about october, 1713. in the summer of the following year he was so far advanced as to begin making arrangements with lintot for the printing; and the first two books, in manuscript, were put into the hands of lord halifax. in june, 1715, between the 10th and 28th, the subscribers received their copies of the first volume; and in july lintot began to publish that volume generally. some readers will inquire, who paid for the printing and paper, &c.? all this expense fell upon lintot, for whom pope was superfluously anxious. the sagacious bookseller understood what he was about; and, when a pirated edition was published in holland, he counteracted the injury by printing a cheap edition, of which 7500 copies were sold in a few weeks; an extraordinary proof of the extended interest in literature. the second, third, and fourth volumes of the iliad, each containing, like the first, four books, were published successively in 1716, 1717, 1718; and in 1720, pope completed the work by publishing the fifth volume, containing five books, and the sixth, containing the last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus. the odyssey was commenced in 1723, (not 1722, as mr. roscoe virtually asserts at p. 259,) and the publication of it was finished in 1725. the sale, however, was much inferior to that of the iliad; for which more reasons than one might be assigned. but there can be no doubt that pope himself depreciated the work, by his undignified arrangements for working by subordinate hands. such a process may answer in sculpture, because there a quantity of rough-hewing occurs, which can no more be improved by committing it to a phidias, than a common shop-bill could be improved in its arithmetic by sir isaac newton. but in literature such arrangements are degrading; and, above all, in a work which was but too much exposed already to the presumption of being a mere effort of mechanic skill, or (as curll said to the house of lords)" _a knack_; "it was deliberately helping forward that idea to let off parts of the labor. only think of milton letting off by contract to the lowest offer, and to be delivered by such a day, (for which good security to be found,) six books of paradise lost. it is true, the great dramatic authors were often _collaborateurs_, but their case was essentially different. the loss, however, fell not upon pope, but upon lintot, who, on this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather broadly of prosecution. but that was out of the question. pope had acted indiscreetly, but nothing could be alleged against his honor; for he had expressly warned the public, that he did not, as in the other case, profess _to translate_, but _to undertake [endnote: 10] a translation_ of the odyssey. lintot, however, was no loser absolutely, though he might be so in relation to his expectations; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, and became sheriff of the county in which his estates lay. we have pursued the homeric labors uninterruptedly from their commencement in 1713, till their final termination in 1725, a period of twelve years or nearly; because this was the task to which pope owed the dignity, if not the comforts, of his life, since it was this which enabled him to decline a pension from all administrations, and even from his friend craggs, the secretary, to decline the express offer of 300l per annum. indeed pope is always proud to own his obligations to homer. in the interval, however, between the iliad and the odyssey, pope listened to proposals made by jacob tonson, that he should revise an edition of shakspeare. for this, which was in fact the first attempt at establishing the text of the mighty poet, pope obtained but little money, and still less reputation. he received, according to tradition, only 217l. 12s. for his trouble of collation, which must have been considerable, and some other trifling editorial labor. and the opinion of all judges, from the first so unfavorable as to have depreciated the money-value of the book enormously, perhaps from a prepossession of the public mind against the fitness of pope for executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since pronounced this work the very worst edition in existence. for the edition we have little to plead; but for the editor it is but just to make three apologies. in the _first_ place, he wrote a brilliant preface, which, although (like other works of the same class) too much occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, for the sake of an effective antithesis, doing deep injustice to shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, extended his fame, by giving the sanction and countersign of a great wit to the national admiration. _secondly_, as dr. johnson admits, pope's failure pointed out the right road to his successors. _thirdly_, even in this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated scale of merit, as distributed amongst the long succession of editors through that century, pope holds a rank proportionable to his age. for the year 1720, he is no otherwise below theobald, hanmer, capell, warburton, or even johnson, than as they are successively below each other, and all of them as to accuracy below steevens, as he again was below malone and read. the gains from shakspeare would hardly counterbalance the loss which pope sustained this year from the south sea bubble. one thing, by the way, is still unaccountably neglected by writers on this question. how it was that the great mississippi bubble, during the orleans regency in paris, should have happened to coincide with that of london. if this were accident, how marvellous that the same insanity should possess the two great capitals of christendom in the same year? if, again, it were not accident, but due to some common cause, why is not that cause explained? pope to his nearest friends never stated the amount of his loss. the biographers report that at one time his stock was worth from twenty to thirty thousand pounds. but that is quite impossible. it is true, that as the stock rose at one time a thousand per cent., this would not imply on pope's part an original purchase beyond twenty-five hundred pounds or thereabouts. but pope has furnished an argument against _that, _ which we shall improve. he quotes, more than once, as applicable to his own case, the old proverbial riddle of hesiod, _--------------, the half is more than the whole_. what did he mean by that? we understand it thus: that between the selling and buying, the variations had been such as to sink his shares to one half of the price they had once reached, but, even at that depreciation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had been at first. but the half of 25,000 would be a far larger sum than pope could have ventured to risk upon a fund confessedly liable to daily fluctuation. 3000 english pounds would be the utmost he could risk; in which case the half of 25,000 pounds would have left him so very much richer, that he would have proclaimed his good fortune as an evidence of his skill and prudence. yet, on the contrary, he wished his friends to understand at times that he had lost. but his friends forgot to ask one important question: was the word _loss_ to be understood in relation to the imaginary and nominal wealth which he once possessed, or in relation to the absolute sum invested in the south sea fund? the truth is, pope practised on this, as on other occasions, a little finessing, which is the chief foible in his character. his object was, that, according to circumstances, he might vindicate his own freedom from the common mania, in case his enemies should take that handle for attacking him; or might have it in his power to plead poverty, and to account for it, in case he should ever accept that pension which had been so often tendered but never sternly rejected. in 1723 pope lost one of his dearest friends, bishop atterbury, by banishment; a sentence most justly incurred, and mercifully mitigated by the hostile whig government. on the bishop's trial a circumstance occurred to pope which flagrantly corroborated his own belief in his natural disqualification for public life. he was summoned as an evidence on his friend's behalf. he had but a dozen words to say, simply explaining the general tenor of his lordship's behavior at bromley, and yet, under this trivial task, though supported by the enthusiasm of his friendship, he broke down. lord bolingbroke, returning from exile, met the bishop at the sea-side; upon which it was wittily remarked that they were "exchanged." lord bolingbroke supplied to pope the place, or perhaps more than supplied the place, of the friend he had lost; for bolingbroke was a free-thinker, and so far more entertaining to pope, even whilst partially dissenting, than atterbury, whose clerical profession laid him under restraints of decorum, and latterly, there is reason to think, of conscience. in 1725, on closing the odyssey, pope announces his intention to swift of quitting the labors of a translator, and thenceforwards applying himself to original composition. this resolution led to the essay on man, which appeared soon afterwards; and, with the exception of two labors, which occupied pope in the interval between 1726 and 1729, the rest of his life may properly be described as dedicated to the further extension of that essay. the two works which he interposed were a collection of the fugitive papers, whether prose or verse, which he and dean swift had scattered amongst their friends at different periods of life. the avowed motive for this publication, and, in fact, the secret motive, as disclosed in pope's confidential letters, was to make it impossible thenceforwards for piratical publishers like curll. both pope and swift dreaded the malice of curll in case they should die before him. it was one of curll's regular artifices to publish a heap of trash on the death of any eminent man, under the title of his remains; and in allusion to that practice, it was that arbuthnot most wittily called curll "one of the new terrors of death." by publishing _all_, pope would have disarmed curll beforehand; and that was in fact the purpose; and that plea only could be offered by two grave authors, one forty, the other sixty years old, for reprinting _jeux d'esprit_ that never had any other apology than the youth of their authors. yet, strange to say, after all, some were omitted; and the omission of one opened the door to curll as well as that of a score. let curll have once inserted the narrow end of the wedge, he would soon have driven it home. this miscellany, however, in three volumes, (published in 1727, but afterwards increased by a fourth in 1732,) though in itself a trifling work, had one vast consequence. it drew after it swarms of libels and lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at pope, although the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the title-page. these libels in _their_ turn produced a second reaction; and, by stimulating pope to effectual anger, eventually drew forth, for the everlasting admiration of posterity, the very greatest of pope's works; a monument of satirical power the greatest which man has produced, not excepting the macfleckno of dryden, namely, the immortal dunciad. in october of the year 1727, this poem, in its original form, was completed. many editions, not spurious altogether, nor surreptitious, but with some connivance, not yet explained, from pope, were printed in dublin and in london. but the first quarto and acknowledged edition was published in london early in "1728-9," as the editors choose to write it, that is, (without perplexing the reader,) in 1729. on march 12 of which year it was presented by the prime minister, sir robert walpole, to the king and queen at st. james's. like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and afterwards to languish away, pope felt so greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his friends to expect for the future only an indolent companion and a hermit. events rapidly succeeded which tended to strengthen the impression he had conceived of his own decay, and certainly to increase his disgust with the world. in 1732 died his friend atterbury; and on december the 7th of the same year gay, the most unpretending of all the wits whom he knew, and the one with whom he had at one time been domesticated, expired, after an illness of three days, which dr. arbuthnot declares to have been "the most precipitate" he ever knew. but in fact gay had long been decaying, from the ignoble vice of too much and too luxurious eating. six months after this loss, which greatly affected pope, came the last deadly wound which this life could inflict, in the death of his mother. she had for some time been in her dotage, and recognized no face but that of her son, so that her death was not unexpected; but that circumstance did not soften the blow of separation to pope. she died on the 7th of june, 1733, being then ninety-three years old. three days after, writing to richardson the painter, for the purpose of urging him to come down and take her portrait before the coffin was closed, he says, "i thank god, her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of tranquillity," that "it would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew. adieu, may you die as happily." the funeral took place on the 11th; pope then quitted the house, unable to support the silence of her chamber, and did not return for months, nor in fact ever reconciled himself to the sight of her vacant apartment. swift also he had virtually lost for ever. in april, 1727, this unhappy man had visited pope for the last time. during this visit occurred the death of george i. great expectations arose from that event amongst the tories, in which, of course,' swift shared. it was reckoned upon as a thing of course that walpole would be dismissed. but this bright gleam of hope proved as treacherous as all before; and the anguish of this final disappointment perhaps it was which brought on a violent attack of swift's constitutional malady. on the last of august he quitted pope's house abruptly, concealed himself in london, and finally quitted it, as stealthily as he had before quitted twickenham, for ireland, never more to return. he left a most affectionate letter for pope; but his affliction, and his gloomy anticipations of insanity, were too oppressive to allow of his seeking a personal interview. pope might now describe himself pretty nearly as _ultimus suorum_; and if he would have friends in future, he must seek them, as he complains bitterly, almost amongst strangers and another generation. this sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. his essay on man was but one link in a general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here and there pursuing his themes into the fields of metaphysics, but no farther in either field of morals or metaphysics than he could make compatible with a poetical treatment. these works, however, naturally entangled him in feuds of various complexions with people of very various pretensions; and to admirers of pope so fervent as we profess ourselves, it is painful to acknowledge that the dignity of his latter years, and the becoming tranquillity of increasing age, are sadly disturbed by the petulance and the tone of irritation which, alike to those in the wrong and in the right, inevitably besiege all personal disputes. he was agitated, besides, by a piratical publication of his correspondence. this emanated of course from the den of curll, the universal robber and "_blatant beast_" of those days; and, besides the injury offered to his feelings by exposing some youthful sallies which he wished to have suppressed, it drew upon him a far more disgraceful imputation, most assuredly unfounded, but accredited by dr. johnson, and consequently in full currency to this day, of having acted collusively with curll, or at least through curll, for the publication of what he wished the world to see, but could not else have devised any decent pretext for exhibiting. the disturbance of his mind on this occasion led to a circular request, dispersed amongst his friends, that they would return his letters. all complied except swift. he only delayed, and in fact shuffled. but it is easy to read in his evasions, and pope, in spite of his vexation, read the same tale, viz., that, in consequence of his recurring attacks and increasing misery, he was himself the victim of artifices amongst those who surrounded him. what pope apprehended happened. the letters were all published in dublin and in london, the originals being then only returned when they had done their work of exposure. such a tenor of life, so constantly fretted by petty wrongs, or by leaden insults, to which only the celebrity of their object lent force or wings, allowed little opportunity to pope for recalling his powers from angry themes, and converging them upon others of more catholic philosophy. to the last he continued to conceal vipers beneath his flowers; or rather, speaking proportionately to the case, he continued to sheath amongst the gleaming but innocuous lightnings of his departing splendors, the thunderbolts which blasted for ever. his last appearance was his greatest. in 1742 he published the fourth book of the dunciad; to which it has with much reason been objected, that it stands in no obvious relation to the other three, but which, taken as a separate whole, is by far the most brilliant and the weightiest of his works. pope was aware of the _hiatus_ between this last book and the rest, on which account he sometimes called it the greater dunciad; and it would have been easy for him, with a shallow warburtonian ingenuity, to invent links that might have satisfied a mere _verbal_ sense of connection. but he disdained this puerile expedient. the fact was, and could not be disguised from any penetrating eye, that the poem was not a pursuit of the former subjects; it had arisen spontaneously at various times, by looking at the same general theme of dulness (which, in pope's sense, includes all aberrations of the intellect, nay, even any defective equilibrium amongst the faculties) under a different angle of observation, and from a different centre. in this closing book, not only bad authors, as in the other three, but all abuses of science or antiquarian knowledge, or connoisseurship in the arts, are attacked. virtuosi, medalists, butterfly-hunters, florists, erring metaphysicians, &c., are all pierced through and through as with the shafts of apollo. but the imperfect plan of the work as to its internal economy, no less than its exterior relations, is evident in many places; and in particular the whole catastrophe of the poem, if it can be so called, is linked to the rest by a most insufficient incident. to give a closing grandeur to his work, pope had conceived the idea of representing the earth as lying universally under the incubation of one mighty spirit of dulness; a sort of millennium, as we may call it, for ignorance, error, and stupidity. this would take leave of the reader with effect; but how was it to be introduced? at what era? under what exciting cause? as to the eras, pope could not settle that; unless it were a _future_ era, the description of it could not be delivered as a prophecy; and, not being prophetic, it would want much of its grandeur. yet, _as_ a part of futurity, how is it connected with our present times? do they and their pursuits lead to it as a possibility, or as a contingency upon certain habits which we have it in our power to eradicate, (in which case this vision of dulness has a _practical_ warning,) or is it a mere necessity, one amongst the many changes attached to the cycles of human destiny, or which chance brings round with the revolutions of its wheel? all this pope could not determine; but the exciting cause he has determined, and it is preposterously below the effect. the goddess of dulness yawns; and her yawn, which, after all, should rather express the fact and state of universal dulness than its cause, produces a change over all nations tantamount to a long eclipse. meantime, with all its defects of plan, the poem, as to execution, is superior to all which pope has done; the composition is much superior to that of the essay on man, and more profoundly poetic. the parodies drawn from milton, as also in the former books, have a beauty and effect which cannot be expressed; and, if a young lady wished to cull for her album a passage from all pope's writings, which, without a trace of irritation or acrimony, should yet present an exquisite gem of independent beauty, she could not find another passage equal to the little story of the florist and the butterfly-hunter. they plead their cause separately before the throne of dulness; the florist telling how he had reared a superb carnation, which, in honor of the queen, he called caroline, when his enemy, pursuing a butterfly which settled on the carnation, in securing his own object, had destroyed that of the plaintiff. the defendant replies with equal beauty; and it may certainly be affirmed, that, for brilliancy of coloring and the art of poetical narration, the tale is not surpassed by any in the language. this was the last effort of pope worthy of separate notice. he was now decaying rapidly, and sensible of his own decay. his complaint was a dropsy of the chest, and he knew it to be incurable. under these circumstances, his behavior was admirably philosophical. he employed himself in revising and burnishing all his later works, as those upon which he wisely relied for his reputation with future generations. in this task he was assisted by dr. warburton, a new literary friend, who had introduced himself to the favorable notice of pope about four years before, by a defence of the essay on man, which crousaz had attacked, but in general indirectly and ineffectually, by attacking it through the blunders of a very faulty translation. this poem, however, still labors, to religious readers, under two capital defects. if man, according to pope, is now so admirably placed in the universal system of things, that evil only could result from any change, then it seems to follow, either that a fall of man is inadmissible; or at least, that, by placing him in his true centre, it had been a blessing universally. the other objection lies in this, that if all is right already, and in this earthly station, then one argument for a future state, as the scene in which evil is to be redressed, seems weakened or undermined. as the weakness of pope increased, his nearest friends, lord bolingbroke, and a few others, gathered around him. the last scenes were passed almost with ease and tranquillity. he dined in company two days before he died: and on the very day preceding his death he took an airing on blackheath. a few mornings before he died, he was found very early in his library writing on the immortality of the soul. this was an effort of delirium; and he suffered otherwise from this affection of the brain, and from inability to think in his closing hours. but his humanity and goodness, it was remarked, had survived his intellectual faculties. he died on the 30th of may, 1744; and so quietly, that the attendants could not distinguish the exact moment of his dissolution. we had prepared an account of pope's quarrels, in which we had shown that, generally, he was not the aggressor; and often was atrociously ill used before he retorted. this service to pope's memory we had judged important, because it is upon these quarrels chiefly that the erroneous opinion has built itself of pope's fretfulness and irritability. and this unamiable feature of his nature, together with a proneness to petty manoeuvring, are the main foibles that malice has been able to charge upon pope's moral character. yet, with no better foundation for their malignity than these doubtful propensities, of which the first perhaps was a constitutional defect, a defect of his temperament rather than his will, and the second has been much exaggerated, many writers have taken upon themselves to treat pope as a man, if not absolutely unprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet as mean, little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and morose. now the difference between ourselves and these writers is fundamental. they fancy that in pope's character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in pope lay a disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles, or, to adopt the distinction of shakspeare, they see nothing but "dust a little gilt," and we "gold a little dusted." a very rapid glance we will throw over the general outline of his character. as a friend, it is noticed emphatically by martha blount and other contemporaries, who must have had the best means of judging, that no man was so warm-hearted, or so much sacrificed himself for others, as pope; and in fact many of his quarrels grew out of this trait in his character. for once that he levelled his spear in his own quarrel, at least twice he did so on behalf of his insulted parents or his friends. pope was also noticeable for the duration of his friendships; [endnote: 11] some dropped him,--but he never any throughout his life. and let it be remembered, that amongst pope's friends were the men of most eminent talents in those days; so that envy at least, or jealousy of rival power, was assuredly no foible of his. in that respect how different from addison, whose petty manoeuvring against pope proceeded entirely from malignant jealousy. that addison was more in the wrong even than has generally been supposed, and pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more generous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of showing decisively. as a son, we need not insist on pope's preeminent goodness. dean swift, who had lived for months together at twickenham, declares that he had not only never witnessed, but had never heard of anything like it. as a christian, pope appears in a truly estimable light. he found himself a roman catholic by accident of birth; so was his mother; but his father was so upon personal conviction and conversion, yet not without extensive study of the questions at issue. it would have laid open the road to preferment, and preferment was otherwise abundantly before him, if pope would have gone over to the protestant faith. and in his conscience he found no obstacle to that change; he was a philosophical christian, intolerant of nothing but intolerance, a bigot only against bigots. but he remained true to his baptismal profession, partly on a general principle of honor in adhering to a distressed and dishonored party, but chiefly out of reverence and affection to his mother. in his relation to women, pope was amiable and gentlemanly; and accordingly was the object of affectionate regard and admiration to many of the most accomplished in that sex. this we mention especially because we would wish to express our full assent to the manly scorn with which mr. roscoe repels the libellous insinuations against pope and miss martha blount. a more innocent connection we do not believe ever existed. as an author, warburton has recorded that no man ever displayed more candor or more docility to criticisms offered in a friendly spirit. finally, we sum up all in saying, that pope retained to the last a true and diffusive benignity; that this was the quality which survived all others, notwithstanding the bitter trial which his benignity must have stood through life, and the excitement to a spiteful reaction of feeling which was continually pressed upon him by the scorn and insult which his deformity drew upon him from the unworthy. but the moral character of pope is of secondary interest. we are concerned with it only as connected with his great intellectual power. there are three errors which seem current upon this subject. _first_, that pope drew his impulses from french literature; _secondly_, that he was a poet of inferior rank; _thirdly_, that his merit lies in superior "correctness." with respect to the first notion, it has prevailed by turns in every literature. one stage of society, in every nation, brings men of impassioned minds to the contemplation of manners, and of the social affections of man as exhibited in manners. with this propensity cooperates, no doubt, some degree of despondency when looking at the great models of the literature who have usually preoccupied the grander passions, and displayed their movements in the earlier periods of literature. now it happens that the french, from an extraordinary defect in the higher qualities of passion, have attracted the notice of foreign nations chiefly to that field of their literature, in which the taste and the unimpassioned understanding preside. but in all nations such literature is a natural growth of the mind, and would arise equally if the french literature had never existed. the wits of queen anne's reign, or even of charles ii.'s, were not french by their taste or their imitation. butler and dryden were surely not french; and of milton we need not speak; as little was pope french, either by his institution or by his models. boileau he certainly admired too much; and, for the sake of a poor parallelism with a passage about greece in horace, he has falsified history in the most ludicrous manner, without a shadow of countenance from facts, in order to make out that we, like the romans, received laws of taste from those whom we had conquered. but these are insulated cases and accidents, not to insist on his known and most profound admiration, often expressed, for both chaucer, and shakspeare, and milton. secondly, that pope is to be classed as an inferior poet, has arisen purely from a confusion between the departments of poetry which he cultivated and the merit of his culture. the first place must undoubtedly be given for ever,--it cannot be refused,--to the impassioned movements of the tragic, and to the majestic movements of the epic muse. we cannot alter the relations of things out of favor to an individual. but in his own department, whether higher or lower, that man is supreme who has not yet been surpassed; and such a man is pope. as to the final notion, first started by walsh, and propagated by warton, it is the most absurd of all the three; it is not from superior correctness that pope is esteemed more correct, but because the compass and sweep of his performances lies more within the range of ordinary judgments. many questions that have been raised upon milton or shakspeare, questions relating to so subtile a subject as the flux and reflux of human passion, lie far above the region of ordinary capacities; and the indeterminateness or even carelessness of the judgment is transferred by a common confusion to its objects. but waiving this, let us ask, what is meant by "correctness?" correctness in what? in developing the thought? in connecting it, or effecting the transitions? in the use of words? in the grammar? in the metre? under every one of these limitations of the idea, we maintain that pope is _not_ distinguished by correctness; nay, that, as compared with shakspeare, he is eminently incorrect. produce us from any drama of shakspeare one of those leading passages that all men have by heart, and show us any eminent defect in the very sinews of the thought. it is impossible; defects there may be, but they will always be found irrelevant to the main central thought, or to its expression. now turn to pope; the first striking passage which offers itself to our memory, is the famous character of addison, ending thus: "who would not laugh, if such a man there be, who but must weep if atticus were he?" why must we laugh? because we find a grotesque assembly of noble and ignoble qualities. very well; but why then must we weep? because this assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent man of genius. well, that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for the degradation of human nature. but then revolves the question, why must we laugh? because, if the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping, so much we know from the very first. the very first line says, "peace to all such. but were there one whose fires _true genius kindles_ and fair fame inspires." thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous character. we are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden discovery that the character belonged to a man of genius; and this we had already known from the beginning. match us this prodigious oversight in shakspeare. again, take the essay on criticism. it is a collection of independent maxims, tied together into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural order or logical dependency; generally so vague as to mean nothing. like the general rules of justice, &c., in ethics, to which every man assents; but when the question comes about any practical case, _is_ it just? the opinions fly asunder far as the poles. and, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so often as by pope, and by pope nowhere so often as in this very poem. as a single instance, he proscribes monosyllabic lines; and in no english poem of any pretensions are there so many lines of that class as in this. we have counted above a score, and the last line of all is monosyllabic. not, therefore, for superior correctness, but for qualities the very same as belong to his most distinguished brethren, is pope to be considered a great poet; for impassioned thinking, powerful description, pathetic reflection, brilliant narration. his characteristic difference is simply that he carried these powers into a different field, and moved chiefly amongst the social paths of men, and viewed their characters as operating through their manners. and our obligations to him arise chiefly on this ground, that having already, in the persons of earlier poets, carried off the palm in all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for the majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence of the tragic drama, to pope we owe it that we can now claim an equal preeminence in the sportive and aerial graces of the mock heroic and satiric muse; that in the dunciad we possess a peculiar form of satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by any other nation) we see alternately her festive smile and her gloomiest scowl; that the grave good sense of the nation has here found its brightest mirror; and, finally, that through pope the cycle of our poetry is perfected and made orbicular, that from that day we might claim the laurel equally, whether for dignity or grace. notes. note 1. dr. johnson, however, and joseph warton, for reasons not stated, have placed his birth on the 22d. to this statement, as opposed to that which comes from the personal friends of pope, little attention is due. ruffhead and spence, upon such questions, must always be of higher authority than johnson and warton, and _a fortiori_ than bowles. but it ought not to be concealed, though hitherto unnoticed by any person, that some doubt after all remains whether any of the biographers is right. an anonymous writer, contemporary with pope, and evidently familiar with his personal history, declares that he was born on the 8th of june; and he connects it with an event that, having a public and a partisan interest, (the birth of that prince of wales, who was known twenty-seven years afterwards as the pretender,) would serve to check his own recollections, and give them a collateral voucher. it is true he wrote for an ill-natured purpose; but no purpose whatever could have been promoted by falsifying this particular date. what is still more noticeable, however, pope himself puts a most emphatic negative upon all these statements. in a pathetic letter to a friend, when his attention could not have been wandering, for he is expressly insisting upon a sentiment which will find an echo in many a human heart, viz., that a birthday, though from habit usually celebrated as a festal day, too often is secretly a memorial of disappointment, and an anniversary of sorrowful meaning, he speaks of the very day on which he is then writing as his own birthday; and indeed what else could give any propriety to the passage? now the date of this letter is january 1, 1733. surely pope knew his own birthday better than those who have adopted a random rumor without investigation. but, whilst we are upon this subject, we must caution the readers of pope against too much reliance upon the chronological accuracy of his editors. _all_ are scandalously careless; and generally they are faithless. many allusions are left unnoticed, which a very little research would have illustrated; many facts are omitted, even yet recoverable, which are essential to the just appreciation of pope's satirical blows; and dates are constantly misstated. mr. roscoe is the most careful of pope's editors; but even he is often wrong. for instance, he has taken the trouble to write a note upon pope's humorous report to lord burlington of his oxford journey on horseback with lintot; and this note involves a sheer impossibility. the letter is undated, except as to the month; and mr. roscoe directs the reader to supply 1714 as the true date, which is a gross anachronism. for a ludicrous anecdote is there put into lintot's mouth, representing some angry critic, who had been turning over pope's homer, with frequent _pshaws_, as having been propitiated, by mr. lintot's dinner, into a gentler feeling towards pope, and, finally, by the mere effect of good cheer, without an effort on the publisher's part, as coming to a confession, that what he ate and what he had been reading were equally excellent. but in the year 1714, _no part_ of pope's homer was printed; june, 1715, was the month in which even the subscribers first received the four earliest books of the iliad; and the public generally not until july. this we notice by way of specimen; in itself, or as an error of mere negligence, it would be of little importance; but it is a case to which mr. roscoe has expressly applied his own conjectural skill, and solicited the attention of his reader. we may judge, therefore, of his accuracy in other cases which he did not think worthy of examination. there is another instance, presenting itself in every page, of ignorance concurring with laziness, on the part of all pope's editors, and with the effect not so properly of misleading as of perplexing the general reader. until lord macclesfield's bill for altering the style in the very middle of the eighteenth century, six years, therefore, after the death of pope, there was a custom, arising from the collision between the civil and ecclesiastical year, of dating the whole period that lies between december 31st and march 25th, (both days _exclusively,_) as belonging indifferently to the past or the current year. this peculiarity had nothing to do with the old and new style, but was, we believe, redressed by the same act of parliament. now in pope's time it was absolutely necessary that a man should use this double date, because else he was liable to be seriously misunderstood. for instance, it was then always said that charles i had suffered on the 30th of january 1648/9, and why? because, had the historian fixed the date to what it really was, 1649, in that case all those (a very numerous class) who supposed the year 1649 to commence on ladyday, or march 25, would have understood him to mean that this event happened in what we _now_ call 1650, for not until 1650 was there any january which _they_ would have acknowledged as belonging to 1649, since _they_ added to the year 1648 all the days from january 1 to march 24. on the other hand, if he had said simply that charles suffered in 1648, he would have been truly understood by the class we have just mentioned; but by another class, who began the year from the 1st of january, he would have been understood to mean what we _now_ mean by the year 1648. there would have been a sheer difference, not of one, as the reader might think at first sight, but of _two_ entire years in the chronology of the two parties; which difference, and all possibility of doubt, is met and remedied by the fractional date 1648/1649 for that date says in effect it was 1648 to you who do not open the new year till ladyday; it was 1649 to you who open it from january 1. thus much to explain the real sense of the case, and it follows from this explanation, that no part of the year ever _can_ have the fractional or double date except the interval from january 1 to march 24 inclusively. and hence arises a practical inference, viz, that the very same reason, and no other, which formerly enjoined the use of the compound or fractional date, viz, the prevention of a capital ambiguity or dilemma, now enjoins its omission. for in our day, when the double opening of the year is abolished, what sense is there in perplexing a reader by using a fraction which offers him a choice without directing him how to choose? in fact, it is the _denominator_ of the fraction, if one may so style the lower figure, which expresses to a modern eye the true year. yet the editors of pope, as well as many other writers, have confused their readers by this double date; and why? simply because they were confused themselves. (period omitted in original; but there is a double space following, suggesting one should have been there) many errors in literature of large extent have arisen from this confusion. thus it was said properly enough in the contemporary accounts, for instance, in lord monmouth's memoirs that queen elizabeth died on the last day of the year 1602, for she died on the 24th of march, and by a careful writer this event would have been dated as march 24, 1602/1603. but many writers, misled by the phrase above cited, have asserted that james i. was proclaimed on the 1st of january, 1603. heber, bishop of calcutta, again, has ruined the entire chronology of the life of jeremy taylor, and unconsciously vitiated the facts, by not understanding this fractional date. mr roscoe even too often leaves his readers to collect the true year as they can. thus, e. g. at p. 509, of his life, he quotes from pope's letter to warburton, in great vexation for the surreptitious publication of his letters in ireland, under date of february 4, 174-0/1. but why not have printed it intelligibly as 1741? incidents there are in most men's lives, which are susceptible of a totally different moral value, according as the are dated in one year or another that might be a kind and honorable liberality in 1740, which would be a fraud upon creditors in 1741. exile to a distance of ten miles from london in january, 1744 might argue, that a man was a turbulent citizen, and suspected of treason, whilst the same exile in january, 1745, would simply argue that, as a papist, he had been included amongst his whole body in a general measure of precaution to meet the public dangers of that year. this explanation we have thought it right to make both for its extensive application to all editions of pope, and on account of the serious blunders which have arisen from the case when ill understood, and because, in a work upon education, written jointly by messrs lant carpenter and shephard though generally men of ability and learning, this whole point is erroneously explained. note 2. it is apparently with allusion to this part of his history, which he would often have heard from the lips of his own father, that pope glances at his uncle's memory somewhat disrespectfully in his prose letter to lord harvey. note 3. some accounts, however, say to flanders, in which case, perhaps, antwerp or brussels would have the honor of his conversion. note 4. this however was not twyford, according to an anonymous pamphleteer of the times but a catholic seminary in devonshire street that is, in the bloomsbury district of london, and the same author asserts, that the scene of his disgrace as indeed seems probable beforehand, was not the first but the last of his arenas as a schoolboy which indeed was first, and which last, is very unimportant; but with a view to another point, which is not without interest, namely, as to the motive of pope for so bitter a lampoon as we must suppose it to have been, as well as with regard to the topics which he used to season it, this anonymous letter throws the only light which has been offered; and strange it is, that no biographer of pope should have hunted upon the traces indicated by him. any solution of pope's virulence, and of the master's bitter retaliation, even _as_ a solution, is so far entitled to attention; apart from which the mere straightforwardness of this man's story, and its minute circumstantiality, weigh greatly in its favor. to our thinking, he unfolds the whole affair in the simple explanation, nowhere else to be found, that the master of the school, the mean avenger of a childish insult by a bestial punishment, was a mr. bromley, one of james ii.'s popish apostates; whilst the particular statements which he makes with respect to himself and the young duke of norfolk of 1700, as two schoolfellows of pope at that time and place, together with his voluntary promise to come forward in person, and verify his account if it should happen to be challenged,--are all, we repeat, so many presumptions in favor of his veracity. "mr. alexander pope," says he, "before he had been four months at this school, or was able to construe tully's offices, employed his muse in satirizing his master. it was a libel of at least one hundred verses, which (a fellow-student having given information of it) was found in his pocket; and the young satirist was soundly whipped, and kept a prisoner to his room for seven days; whereupon his father fetched him away, and i have been told he never went to school more." this bromley, it has been ascertained, was the son of a country gentleman in worcestershire, and must have had considerable prospects at one time, since it appears that he had been a gentleman-commoner at christ's church, oxford. there is an error in the punctuation of the letter we have just quoted, which affects the sense in a way very important to the question before us. bromley is described as "one of king james's converts in oxford, some years _after_ that prince's abdication;" but, if this were really so, he must have been a conscientious convert. the latter clause should be connected with what follows:" _some years after that prince's abdication he kept a little seminary_; "that is, when his mercenary views in quitting his religion were effectually defeated, when the boyne had sealed his despair, he humbled himself into a petty schoolmaster. these facts are interesting, because they suggest at once the motive for the merciless punishment inflicted upon pope. his own father was a papist like bromley, but a sincere and honest papist, who had borne double taxes, legal stigmas, and public hatred for conscience' sake. his contempt was habitually pointed at those who tampered with religion for interested purposes. his son inherited these upright feelings. and we may easily guess what would be the bitter sting of any satire he would write on bromley. such a topic was too true to be forgiven, and too keenly barbed by bromley's conscience. by the way, this writer, like ourselves, reads in this juvenile adventure a prefiguration of pope's satirical destiny. note 5. that is, sheffield, and, legally speaking, of buckingham _shire_. for he would not take the title of buckingham, under a fear that there was lurking somewhere or other a claim to that title amongst the connections of the villiers family. he was a pompous grandee, who lived in uneasy splendor, and, as a writer, most extravagantly overrated; accordingly, he is now forgotten. such was his vanity, and his ridiculous mania for allying himself with royalty, that he first of all had the presumption to court the princess (afterwards queen) anne. being rejected, he then offered himself to the illegitimate daughter of james ii., by the daughter of sir charles sedley. she was as ostentatious as himself, and accepted him. note 6. meantime, the felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing; and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words, --"_jurisque secundi_ _ambitus impatiens_, et summo dulcius unum stare loco,"---than this child of fourteen has done in the following couplet, which, most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection. "and impotent desire to reign alone, _that scorns the dull reversion of a throne_." but the passage for which beyond all others we must make room, is a series of eight lines, corresponding to six in the original; and this for two reasons: first, because dr. joseph warton has deliberately asserted, that in our whole literature, "we have scarcely eight more beautiful lines than these;" and though few readers will subscribe to so sweeping a judgment, yet certainly these must be wonderful lines for a boy, which could challenge such commendation from an experienced _polyhistor_ of infinite reading. secondly, because the lines contain a night-scene. now it must be well known to many readers, that the famous night scene in the iliad, so familiar to every schoolboy, has been made the subject, for the last thirty years, of severe, and, in many respects, of just criticisms. this description will therefore have a double interest by comparison, whilst, whatever may be thought of either taken separately for itself, considered as a translation, this which we now quote is as true to statius as the other is undoubtedly faithless to homer "_jamque per emeriti surgens confima phoebi titanis, late mundo subvecta silenti rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aera biga jam pecudes volucresque tacent. jam somnus avaris inserpit curis, pronusque per aera nutat, grata laboratae referens oblivia vitae_" theb i 336-341. "'twas now the time when phoebus yields to night, and rising cynthia sheds her silver light, wide o'er the world in solemn pomp she drew her airy chariot hung with pearly dew all birds and beasts he hush'd. sleep steals away the wild desires of men and toils of day, and brings, descending through the silent air, a sweet forgetfulness of human care." note 7. one writer of that age says, in cheapside, but probably this difference arose from contemplating lombard street as a prolongation of cheapside. note 8. dr johnson said, that all he could discover about mr cromwell, was the fact of his going a hunting in a tie wig, but gay has added another fact to dr johnson's, by calling him "honest _hatless_ cromwell with red breeches" this epithet has puzzled the commentators, but its import is obvious enough cromwell, as we learn from more than one person, was anxious to be considered a fine gentleman, and devoted to women. now it was long the custom in that age for such persons, when walking with ladies, to carry their hats in their hand. louis xv. used to ride by the side of madame de pompadour hat in hand. note 9. it is strange indeed to find, not only that pope had so frequently kept rough copies of his own letters, and that he thought so well of them as to repeat the same letter to different persons, as in the case of the two lovers killed by lightning, or even to two sisters, martha and therese blount (who were sure to communicate their letters,) but that even swift had retained copies of _his. _ note 10. the word _undertake_ had not yet lost the meaning of shakspeare's age, in which it was understood to describe those cases where, the labor being of a miscellaneous kind, some person in chief offered to overlook and conduct the whole, whether with or without personal labor. the modern _undertaker,_ limited to the care of funerals, was then but one of numerous cases to which the term was applied. note 11. we may illustrate this feature in the behavior of pope to savage. when all else forsook him, when all beside pleaded the insults of savage for withdrawing their subscriptions, pope sent his in advance. and when savage had insulted _him_ also, arrogantly commanding him never "to presume to interfere or meddle in his affairs," dignity and self-respect made pope obedient to these orders, except when there was an occasion of serving savage. on his second visit to bristol (when he returned from glamorganshire,) savage had been thrown into the jail of the city. one person only interested himself for this hopeless profligate, and was causing an inquiry to be made about his debts at the time savage died. so much dr. johnson admits; but he _forgets_ to mention the name of this long suffering friend. it was pope. meantime, let us not be supposed to believe the lying legend of savage; he was doubtless no son of lady macclesfield's, but an impostor, who would not be sent to the tread-mill. charles lamb. it sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a bad sense, to say, that in every literature of large compass some authors will be found to rest much of the interest which surrounds them on their essential _non_-popularity. they are good for the very reason that they are not in conformity to the current taste. they interest because to the world they are _not_ interesting. they attract by means of their repulsion. not as though it could separately furnish a reason for loving a book, that the majority of men had found it repulsive. _prima facie_, it must suggest some presumption _against_ a book, that it has failed to gain public attention. to have roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud against its own principles or its temper, may happen to be a good sign. _that_ argues power. hatred may be promising. the deepest revolutions of mind sometimes begin in hatred. but simply to have left a reader unimpressed, is in itself a neutral result, from which the inference is doubtful. yet even _that_, even simple failure to impress, may happen at times to be a result from positive powers in a writer, from special originalities, such as rarely reflect themselves in the mirror of the ordinary understanding. it seems little to be perceived, how much the great scriptural [endnote: 1] idea of the _worldly_ and the _unworldly_ is found to emerge in literature as well as in life. in reality the very same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. a library divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and minority. the world has an instinct for recognizing its own; and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life. from qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, than it does in the realities of life. charles lamb, if any ever _was_ is amongst the class here contemplated; he, if any ever _has_, ranks amongst writers whose works are destined to be forever unpopular, and yet forever interesting; interesting, moreover, by means of those very qualities which guarantee their non-popularity. the same qualities which will be found forbidding to the worldly and the thoughtless, which will be found insipid to many even amongst robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will continue to command a select audience in every generation. the prose essays, under the signature of _elia_, form the most delightful section amongst lamb's works. they traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. but this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness chequered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross-lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects casually described, whether men, or things, or usages, and, in the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ancient recollections and to decaying forms of household life, as things retiring before the tumult of new and revolutionary generations; these traits in combination communicate to the papers a grace and strength of originality which nothing in any literature approaches, whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most felicitous papers of addison, such as those on sir roger de coverly, and some others in the same vein of composition. they resemble addison's papers also in the diction, which is natural and idiomatic, even to carelessness. they are equally faithful to the truth of nature; and in this only they differ remarkably--that the sketches of elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own character, whereas in all those of addison the personal peculiarities of the delineator (though known to the reader from the beginning through the account of the club) are nearly quiescent. now and then they are recalled into a momentary notice, but they do not act, or at all modify his pictures of sir roger or will wimble. _they_ are slightly and amiably eccentric; but the spectator him-self, in describing them, takes the station of an ordinary observer. everywhere, indeed, in the writings of lamb, and not merely in his _elia_, the character of the writer cooperates in an under current to the effect of the thing written. to understand in the fullest sense either the gaiety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind, whether native and original, or impressed gradually by the accidents of situation; whether simply developed out of predispositions by the action of life, or violently scorched into the constitution by some fierce fever of calamity. there is in modern literature a whole class of writers, though not a large one, standing within the same category; some marked originality of character in the writer become a coefficient with what he says to a common result; you must sympathize with this _personality_ in the author before you can appreciate the most significant parts of his views. in most books the writer figures as a mere abstraction, without sex or age or local station, whom the reader banishes from his thoughts. what is written seems to proceed from a blank intellect, not from a man clothed with fleshly peculiarities and differences. these peculiarities and differences neither do, nor (generally speaking)_could_ intermingle with the texture of the thoughts so as to modify their force or their direction. in such books, and they form the vast majority, there is nothing to be found or to be looked for beyond the direct objective. (_sit venia verbo_!) but, in a small section of books, the objective in the thought becomes confluent with the subjective in the thinker--the two forces unite for a joint product; and fully to enjoy that product, or fully to apprehend either element, both must be known. it is singular, and worth inquiring into, for the reason that the greek and roman literature had no such books. timon of athens, or diogenes, one may conceive qualified for this mode of authorship, had journalism existed to rouse them in those days; their "articles" would no doubt have been fearfully caustic. but, as _they_ failed to produce anything, and lucian in an after age is scarcely characteristic enough for the purpose, perhaps we may pronounce rabelais and montaigne the earliest of writers in the class described. in the century following _theirs_, came sir thomas brown, and immediately after _him_ la fontaine. then came swift, sterne, with others less distinguished; in germany, hippel, the friend of kant, harmann, the obscure; and the greatest of the whole body--john paul fr. richter. in _him_, from the strength and determinateness of his nature as well as from the great extent of his writing, the philosophy of this interaction between the author as a human agency and his theme as an intellectual reagency, might best be studied. from _him_ might be derived the largest number of cases, illustrating boldly this absorption of the universal into the concrete--of the pure intellect into the human nature of the author. but nowhere could illustrations be found more interesting--shy, delicate, evanescent--shy as lightning, delicate and evanescent as the colored pencillings on a frosty night from the northern lights, than in the better parts of lamb. to appreciate lamb, therefore, it is requisite that his character and temperament should be understood in their coyest and most wayward features. a capital defect it would be if these could not be gathered silently from lamb's works themselves. it would be a fatal mode of dependency upon an alien and separable accident if they needed an external commentary. but they do _not_. the syllables lurk up and down the writings of lamb which decipher his eccentric nature. his character lies there dispersed in anagram; and to any attentive reader the regathering and restoration of the total word from its scattered parts is inevitable without an effort. still it is always a satisfaction in knowing a result, to know also its _why_ and _how_; and in so far as every character is likely to be modified by the particular experience, sad or joyous, through which the life has travelled, it is a good contribution towards the knowledge of that resulting character as a whole to have a sketch of that particular experience. what trials did it impose? what energies did it task? what temptations did it unfold? these calls upon the moral powers, which in music so stormy, many a life is doomed to hear, how were they faced? the character in a capital degree moulds oftentimes the life, but the life _always_ in a subordinate degree moulds the character. and the character being in this case of lamb so much of a key to the writings, it becomes important that the life should be traced, however briefly, as a key to the character. that is _one_ reason for detaining the reader with some slight record of lamb's career. such a record by preference and of right belongs to a case where the intellectual display, which is the sole ground of any public interest at all in the man, has been intensely modified by the _humanities_ and moral _personalities_ distinguishing the subject. we read a physiology, and need no information as to the life and conversation of its author; a meditative poem becomes far better understood by the light of such information; but a work of genial and at the same time eccentric sentiment, wandering upon untrodden paths, is barely intelligible without it. there is a good reason for arresting judgment on the writer, that the court may receive evidence on the life of the man. but there is another reason, and, in any other place, a better; which reason lies in the extraordinary value of the life considered separately for itself. logically, it is not allowable to say that _here;_ and, considering the principal purpose of this paper, any possible _independent_ value of the life must rank as a better reason for reporting it. since, in a case where the original object is professedly to estimate the writings of a man, whatever promises to further that object must, merely by that tendency, have, in relation to that place, a momentary advantage which it would lose if valued upon a more abstract scale. liberated from this casual office of throwing light upon a book--raised to its grander station of a solemn deposition to the moral capacities of man in conflict with calamity--viewed as a return made into the chanceries of heaven--upon an issue directed from that court to try the amount of power lodged in a poor desolate pair of human creatures for facing the very anarchy of storms--this obscure life of the two lambs, brother and sister, (for the two lives were one life,) rises into a grandeur that is not paralleled once in a generation. rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of charles lamb; and perhaps in one chief result it offers to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that is awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., in the record which it furnishes, that by meekness of submission, and by earnest conflict with evil, in the spirit of cheerfulness, it is possible ultimately to disarm or to blunt the very heaviest of curses--even the curse of lunacy. had it been whispered, in hours of infancy, to lamb, by the angel who stood by his cradle--"thou, and the sister that walks by ten years before thee, shall be through life, each to each, the solitary fountain of comfort; and except it be from this fountain of mutual love, except it be as brother and sister, ye shall not taste the cup of peace on earth!"--here, if there was sorrow in reversion, there was also consolation. but what funeral swamps would have instantly ingulfed this consolation, had some meddling fiend prolonged the revelation, and, holding up the curtain from the sad future a little longer, had said scornfully--"peace on earth! peace for you two, charles and mary lamb! what peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? is there peace on earth for the lunatic--peace for the parenticide--peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?" and then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of woe might have added--"thou also, thyself, charles lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm; even thou shalt taste the secrets of lunacy, and enter as a captive its house of bondage; whilst over thy sister the accursed scorpion shall hang suspended through life, like death hanging over the beds of hospitals, striking at times, but more often threatening to strike; or withdrawing its instant menaces only to lay bare her mind more bitterly to the persecutions of a haunted memory!" considering the nature of the calamity, in the first place; considering, in the second place, its life-long duration; and, in the last place, considering the quality of the resistance by which it was met, and under what circumstances of humble resources in money or friends--we have come to the deliberate judgment, that the whole range of history scarcely presents a more affecting spectacle of perpetual sorrow, humiliation, or conflict, and that was supported to the end, (that is, through forty years,) with more resignation, or with more absolute victory. charles lamb was born in february of the year 1775. his immediate descent was humble; for his father, though on one particular occasion civilly described as a "scrivener," was in reality a domestic servant to mr. salt--a bencher (and therefore a barrister of some standing) in the inner temple. john lamb the father belonged by birth to lincoln; from which city, being transferred to london whilst yet a boy, he entered the service of mr. salt without delay; and apparently from this period throughout his life continued in this good man's household to support the honorable relation of a roman client to his _patronus_, much more than that of a mercenary servant to a transient and capricious master. the terms on which he seems to live with the family of the lambs, argue a kindness and a liberality of nature on both sides. john lamb recommended himself as an attendant by the versatility of his accomplishments; and mr. salt, being a widower without children, which means in effect an old bachelor, naturally valued that encyclopaedic range of dexterity which made his house independent of external aid for every mode of service. to kill one's own mutton is but an operose way of arriving at a dinner, and often a more costly way; whereas to combine one's own carpenter, locksmith, hair-dresser, groom, &c., all in one man's person,--to have a robinson crusoe, up to all emergencies of life, always in waiting, --is a luxury of the highest class for one who values his ease. a consultation is held more freely with a man familiar to one's eye, and more profitably with a man aware of one's peculiar habits. and another advantage from such an arrangement is, that one gets any little alteration or repair executed on the spot. to hear is to obey, and by an inversion of pope's rule- "one always _is_, and never _to be_, blest." people of one sole accomplishment, like the _homo unius libri, _ are usually within that narrow circle disagreeably perfect, and therefore apt to be arrogant. people who can do all things, usually do every one of them ill; and living in a constant effort to deny this too palpable fact, they become irritably vain. but mr. lamb the elder seems to have been bent on perfection. he did all things; he did them all well; and yet was neither gloomily arrogant, nor testily vain. and being conscious apparently that all mechanic excellencies tend to illiberal results, unless counteracted by perpetual sacrifices to the muses, he went so far as to cultivate poetry; he even printed his poems, and were we possessed of a copy, (which we are _not_, nor probably is the vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, purely on considerations of respect to the author's memory. it is hardly to be supposed that they did not really merit castigation; and we should best show the sincerity of our respect for mr. lamb, senior, in all those cases where we _could_ conscientiously profess respect by an unlimited application of the knout in the cases where we could _not_. the whole family of the lambs seem to have won from mr. salt the consideration which is granted to humble friends; and from acquaintances nearer to their own standing, to have won a tenderness of esteem such as is granted to decayed gentry. yet naturally, the social rank of the parents, as people still living, must have operated disadvantageously for the children. it is hard, even for the practised philosopher, to distinguish aristocratic graces of manner, and capacities of delicate feeling, in people whose very hearth and dress bear witness to the servile humility of their station. yet such distinctions as wild gifts of nature, timidly and half-unconsciously asserted themselves in the unpretending lambs. already in _their_ favor there existed a silent privilege analogous to the famous one of lord kinsale. he, by special grant from the crown, is allowed, when standing before the king, to forget that he is not himself a king; the bearer of that peerage, through all generations, has the privilege of wearing his hat in the royal presence. by a general though tacit concession of the same nature, the rising generation of the lambs, john and charles, the two sons, and mary lamb, the only daughter, were permitted to forget that their grandmother had been a housekeeper for sixty years, and that their father had worn a livery. charles lamb, individually, was so entirely humble, and so careless of social distinctions, that he has taken pleasure in recurring to these very facts in the family records amongst the most genial of his elia recollections. he only continued to remember, without shame, and with a peculiar tenderness, these badges of plebeian rank, when everybody else, amongst the few survivors that could have known of their existence, had long dismissed them from their thoughts. probably, through mr. salt's interest, charles lamb, in the autumn of 1782, when he wanted something more than four months of completing his eighth year, received a presentation to the magnificent school of christ's hospital. the late dr. arnold, when contrasting the school of his own boyish experience, winchester, with rugby, the school confided to his management, found nothing so much to regret in the circumstances of the latter as its forlorn condition with respect to historical traditions. wherever these were wanting, and supposing the school of sufficient magnitude, it occurred to dr. arnold that something of a compensatory effect for impressing the imagination might be obtained by connecting the school with the nation through the link of annual prizes issuing from the exchequer. an official basis of national patronage might prove a substitute for an antiquarian or ancestral basis. happily for the great educational foundations of london, none of them is in the naked condition of rugby. westminster, st. paul's, merchant tailors', the charter-house, &c., are all crowned with historical recollections; and christ's hospital, besides the original honors of its foundation, so fitted to a consecrated place in a youthful imagination--an asylum for boy-students, provided by a boy-king--innocent, religious, prematurely wise, and prematurely called away from earth--has also a mode of perpetual connection with the state. it enjoys, therefore, _both_ of dr. arnold's advantages. indeed, all the great foundation schools of london, bearing in their very codes of organization the impress of a double function--viz., the conservation of sound learning and of pure religion--wear something of a monastic or cloisteral character in their aspect and usages, which is peculiarly impressive, and even pathetic, amidst the uproars of a capital the most colossal and tumultuous upon earth. here lamb remained until his fifteenth year, which year threw him on the world, and brought him alongside the golden dawn of the french revolution. here he learned a little elementary greek, and of latin more than a little; for the latin notes to mr. cary (of dante celebrity) though brief, are sufficient to reveal a true sense of what is graceful and idiomatic in latinity. _we_ say this, who have studied that subject more than most men. it is not that lamb would have found it an easy task to compose a long paper in latin--nobody _can,_ find it easy to do what he has no motive for habitually practising; but a single sentence of latin wearing the secret countersign of the "sweet roman hand," ascertains sufficiently that, in reading latin classics, a man feels and comprehends their peculiar force or beauty. that is enough. it is requisite to a man's expansion of mind that he should make acquaintance with a literature so radically differing from all modern literatures as is the latin. it is _not_ requisite that he should practise latin composition. here, therefore, lamb obtained in sufficient perfection one priceless accomplishment, which even singly throws a graceful air of liberality over all the rest of a man's attainments: having rarely any pecuniary value, it challenges the more attention to its intellectual value. here also lamb commenced the friendships of his life; and, of all which he formed, he lost none. here it was, as the consummation and crown of his advantages from the time-honored hospital, that he came to know "poor s. t. c." [greek text: ton thaumasiotaton.] until 1796, it is probable that he lost sight of coleridge, who was then occupied with cambridge, having been transferred thither as a "grecian" from the house of christ church. that year, 1796, was a year of change and fearful calamity for charles lamb. on that year revolved the wheels of his after-life. during the three years succeeding to his school days, he had held a clerkship in the south sea house. in 1795, he was transferred to the india house. as a junior clerk, he could not receive more than a slender salary; but even this was important to the support of his parents and sister. they lived together in lodgings near holborn; and in the spring of 1796, miss lamb, (having previously shown signs of lunacy at intervals,) in a sudden paroxysm of her disease, seized a knife from the dinner table, and stabbed her mother, who died upon the spot. a coroner's inquest easily ascertained the nature of a case which was transparent in all its circumstances, and never for a moment indecisive as regarded the medical symptoms. the poor young lady was transferred to the establishment for lunatics at hoxton. she soon recovered, we believe; but her relapses were as sudden as her recoveries, and she continued through life to revisit, for periods of uncertain seclusion, this house of woe. this calamity of his fireside, followed soon after by the death of his father, who had for some time been in a state of imbecility, determined the future destiny of lamb. apprehending, with the perfect grief of perfect love, that his sister's fate was sealed for life--viewing her as his own greatest benefactress, which she really _had_ been through her advantage by ten years of age--yielding with impassioned readiness to the depth of his fraternal affection, what at any rate he would have yielded to the sanctities of duty as interpreted by his own conscience--he resolved forever to resign all thoughts of marriage with a young lady whom he loved, forever to abandon all ambitious prospects that might have tempted him into uncertainties, humbly to content himself with the _certainties_ of his indian clerkship, to dedicate himself for the future to the care of his desolate and prostrate sister, and to leave the rest to god. these sacrifices he made in no hurry or tumult, but deliberately, and in religious tranquillity. these sacrifices were accepted in heaven--and even on this earth they _had_ their reward. she, for whom he gave up all, in turn gave up all for _him_. she devoted herself to his comfort. many times she returned to the lunatic establishment, but many times she was restored to illuminate the household hearth for _him_; and of the happiness which for forty years and more he had, no hour seemed true that was not derived from her. hence forwards, therefore, until he was emancipated by the noble generosity of the east india directors, lamb's time, for nine-and-twenty years, was given to the india house. "_o fortunati nimium, sua si bona narint,_" is applicable to more people than "_agricolae_." clerks of the india house are as blind to their own advantages as the blindest of ploughmen. lamb was summoned, it is true, through the larger and more genial section of his life, to the drudgery of a copying clerk--making confidential entries into mighty folios, on the subject of calicoes and muslins. by this means, whether he would or not, he became gradually the author of a great "serial" work, in a frightful number of volumes, on as dry a department of literature as the children of the great desert could have suggested. nobody, he must have felt, was ever likely to study this great work of his, not even dr. dryasdust. he had written in vain, which is not pleasant to know. there would be no second edition called for by a discerning public in leadenhall street; not a chance of that. and consequently the _opera omnia_ of lamb, drawn up in a hideous battalion, at the cost of labor so enormous, would be known only to certain families of spiders in one generation, and of rats in the next. such a labor of sysyphus,--the rolling up a ponderous stone to the summit of a hill only that it might roll back again by the gravitation of its own dulness,--seems a bad employment for a man of genius in his meridian energies. and yet, perhaps not. perhaps the collective wisdom of europe could not have devised for lamb a more favorable condition of toil than this very india house clerkship. his works (his leadenhall street works) were certainly not read; popular they _could_ not be, for they were not read by anybody; but then, to balance _that,_ they were not reviewed. his folios were of that order, which (in cowper's words) "not even critics criticise." is _that_ nothing? is it no happiness to escape the hands of scoundrel reviewers? many of us escape being _read;_ the worshipful reviewer does not find time to read a line of us; but we do not for that reason escape being criticised, "shown up," and martyred. the list of _errata_ again, committed by lamb, was probably of a magnitude to alarm any possible compositor; and yet these _errata_ will never be known to mankind. they are dead and buried. they have been cut off prematurely; and for any effect upon their generation, might as well never have existed. then the returns, in a pecuniary sense, from these folios--how important were _they!_ it is not common, certainly, to write folios; but neither is it common to draw a steady income of from 300 _l._ to 400 _l._ per annum from volumes of any size. this will be admitted; but would it not have been better to draw the income without the toil? doubtless it would always be more agreeable to have the rose without the thorn. but in the case before us, taken with all its circumstances, we deny that the toil is truly typified as a thorn; so far from being a thorn in lamb's daily life, on the contrary, it was a second rose ingrafted upon the original rose of the income, that he had to earn it by a moderate but continued exertion. holidays, in a national establishment so great as the india house, and in our too fervid period, naturally could not be frequent; yet all great english corporations are gracious masters, and indulgences of this nature could be obtained on a special application. not to count upon these accidents of favor, we find that the regular toil of those in lamb's situation, began at ten in the morning and ended as the clock struck four in the afternoon. six hours composed the daily contribution of labor, that is precisely one fourth part of the total day. only that, as sunday was exempted, the rigorous expression of the quota was one fourth of six-sevenths, which makes sixty twenty-eighths and not six twenty-fourths of the total time. less toil than this would hardly have availed to deepen the sense of value in that large part of the time still remaining disposable. had there been any resumption whatever of labor in the evening, though but for half an hour, that one encroachment upon the broad continuous area of the eighteen free hours would have killed the tranquillity of the whole day, by _sowing_ it (so to speak) with intermitting anxieties--anxieties that, like tides, would still be rising and falling. whereas now, at the early hour of four, when daylight is yet lingering in the air, even at the dead of winter, in the latitude of london, and when the _enjoying_ section of the day is barely commencing, everything is left which a man would care to retain. a mere dilettante or amateur student, having no mercenary interest concerned, would, upon a refinement of luxury--would, upon choice, give up so much time to study, were it only to sharpen the value of what remained for pleasure. and thus the only difference between the scheme of the india house distributing his time for lamb, and the scheme of a wise voluptuary distributing his time for himself, lay, not in the _amount_ of time deducted from enjoyment, but in the particular mode of appropriating that deduction. an _intellectual_ appropriation of the time, though casually fatiguing, must have pleasures of its own; pleasures denied to a task so mechanic and so monotonous as that of reiterating endless records of sales or consignments not _essentially_ varying from each other. true; it is pleasanter to pursue an intellectual study than to make entries in a ledger. but even an intellectual toil is toil; few people can support it for more than six hours in a day. and the only question, therefore, after all, is, at what period of the day a man would prefer taking this pleasure of study. now, upon that point, as regards the case of lamb, there is no opening for doubt. he, amongst his _popular fallacies_, admirably illustrates the necessity of evening and artificial lights to the prosperity of studies. after exposing, with the perfection of fun, the savage unsociality of those elder ancestors who lived (if life it was) before lamp-light was invented, showing that "jokes came in with candles," since "what repartees could have passed" when people were "grumbling at one another in the dark," and "when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's cheek to be sure that he understood it?"--he goes on to say," this accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry, "viz., because they had no candle-light. even eating he objects to as a very imperfect thing in the dark; you are not convinced that a dish tastes as it should do by the promise of its name, if you dine in the twilight without candles. seeing is believing." the senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. "the sight guarantees the taste. for instance," can you tell pork from veal in the dark, or distinguish sherries from pure malaga? "to all enjoyments whatsoever candles are indispensable as an adjunct; but, as to _reading_," there is, "says lamb," absolutely no such thing but by a candle. we have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, but it was labor thrown away. it is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential phoebus. no true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. the mild internal light, that reveals the fine shapings of poetry, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. milton's morning hymn in paradise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and taylor's rich description of a sunrise smells decidedly of the taper. "this view of evening and candle-light as involved in literature may seem no more than a pleasant extravaganza; and no doubt it is in the nature of such gayeties to travel a little into exaggeration, but substantially it is certain that lamb's feelings pointed habitually in the direction here indicated. his literary studies, whether taking the color of tasks or diversions, courted the aid of evening, which, by means of physical weariness, produces a more luxurious state of repose than belong to the labor hours of day, and courted the aid of lamp-light, which, as lord bacon remarked, gives a gorgeousness to human pomps and pleasures, such as would be vainly sought from the homeliness of day-light. the hours, therefore, which were withdrawn from his own control by the india house, happened to be exactly that part of the day which lamb least valued, and could least have turned to account. the account given of lamb's friends, of those whom he endeavored to love because he admired them, or to esteem intellectually because he loved them personally, is too much colored for general acquiescence by sergeant talfourd's own early prepossessions. it is natural that an intellectual man like the sergeant, personally made known in youth to people, whom from childhood he had regarded as powers in the ideal world, and in some instances as representing the eternities of human speculation, since their names had perhaps dawned upon his mind in concurrence with the very earliest suggestion of topics which they had treated, should overrate their intrinsic grandeur. hazlitt accordingly is styled "the great thinker." but had he been such potentially, there was an absolute bar to his achievement of that station in act and consummation. no man _can_ be a great thinker in our days upon large and elaborate questions without being also a great student. to think profoundly, it is indispensable that a man should have read down to his own starting point, and have read as a collating student to the particular stage at which he himself takes up the subject. at this moment, for instance, how could geology be treated otherwise than childishly by one who should rely upon the encyclopaedias of 1800? or comparative physiology by the most ingenious of men unacquainted with marshall hall, and with the apocalyptic glimpses of secrets unfolding under the hands of professor owen? in such a condition of undisciplined thinking, the ablest man thinks to no purpose. he lingers upon parts of the inquiry that have lost the importance which once they had, under imperfect charts of the subject; he wastes his strength upon problems that have become obsolete; he loses his way in paths that are not in the line of direction upon which the improved speculation is moving; or he gives narrow conjectural solutions of difficulties that have long since received sure and comprehensive ones. it is as if a man should in these days attempt to colonize, and yet, through inertia or through ignorance, should leave behind him all modern resources of chemistry, of chemical agriculture, or of steam-power. hazlitt had read nothing. unacquainted with grecian philosophy, with scholastic philosophy, and with the recomposition of these philosophies in the looms of germany during the last sixty and odd years, trusting merely to the unrestrained instincts of keen mother-wit--whence should hazlitt have had the materials for great thinking? it is through the collation of many abortive voyages to polar regions that a man gains his first chance of entering the polar basin, or of running ahead on the true line of approach to it. the very reason for hazlitt's defect in eloquence as a lecturer, is sufficient also as a reason why he could not have been a comprehensive thinker. "he was not eloquent," says the sergeant, "in the true sense of the term." but why? because it seems "his thoughts were too weighty to be moved along by the shallow stream of feeling which an evening's excitement can rouse,"--an explanation which leaves us in doubt whether hazlitt forfeited his chance of eloquence by accommodating himself to this evening's excitement, or by gloomily resisting it. our own explanation is different, hazlitt was not eloquent, because he was discontinuous. no man can he eloquent whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and (to borrow an impressive word from coleridge) non-sequacious. eloquence resides not in separate or fractional ideas, but in the relations of manifold ideas, and in the mode of their evolution from each other. it is not indeed enough that the ideas should be many, and their relations coherent; the main condition lies in the key of the evolution, in the _law_ of the succession. the elements are nothing without the atmosphere that moulds, and the dynamic forces that combine. now hazlitt's brilliancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment, but spread no deep suffusions of color, and distribute no masses of mighty shadow. a flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone. rhetoric, according to its quality, stands in many degrees of relation to the permanencies of truth; and all rhetoric, like all flesh, is partly unreal, and the glory of both is fleeting. even the mighty rhetoric of sir thomas brown, or jeremy taylor, to whom only it has been granted to open the trumpet-stop on that great organ of passion, oftentimes leaves behind it the sense of sadness which belongs to beautiful apparitions starting out of darkness upon the morbid eye, only to be reclaimed by darkness in the instant of their birth, or which belongs to pageantries in the clouds. but if all rhetoric is a mode of pyrotechny, and all pyrotechnics are by necessity fugacious, yet even in these frail pomps, there are many degrees of frailty. some fireworks require an hour's duration for the expansion of their glory; others, as if formed from fulminating powder, expire in the very act of birth. precisely on that scale of duration and of power stand the glitterings of rhetoric that are not worked into the texture, but washed on from the outside. hazlitt's thoughts were of the same fractured and discontinuous order as his illustrative images--seldom or never self-diffusive; and _that_ is a sufficient argument that he had never cultivated philosophic thinking. not, however, to conceal any part of the truth, we are bound to acknowledge that lamb thought otherwise on this point, manifesting what seemed to us an extravagant admiration of hazlitt, and perhaps even in part for that very glitter which we are denouncing--at least he did so in a conversation with ourselves. but, on the other hand, as this conversation travelled a little into the tone of a disputation, and _our_ frost on this point might seem to justify some undue fervor by way of balance, it is very possible that lamb did not speak his absolute and most dispassionate judgment. and yet again, if he _did_, may we, with all reverence for lamb's exquisite genius, have permission to say--that his own constitution of intellect sinned by this very habit of discontinuity. it was a habit of mind not unlikely to be cherished by his habits of life. amongst these habits was the excess of his social kindness. he scorned so much to deny his company and his redundant hospitality to any man who manifested a wish for either by calling upon him, that he almost seemed to think it a criminality in himself if, by accident, he really _was_ from home on your visit, rather than by possibility a negligence in you, that had not forewarned him of your intention. all his life, from this and other causes, he must have read in the spirit of one liable to sudden interruption; like a dragoon, in fact, reading with one foot in the stirrup, when expecting momentarily a summons to mount for action. in such situations, reading by snatches, and by intervals of precarious leisure, people form the habit of seeking and unduly valuing condensations of the meaning, where in reality the truth suffers by this short-hand exhibition, or else they demand too vivid illustrations of the meaning. lord chesterfield himself, so brilliant a man by nature, already therefore making a morbid estimate of brilliancy, and so hurried throughout his life as a public man, read under this double coercion for craving instantaneous effects. at one period, his only time for reading was in the morning, whilst under the hands of his hair-dresser; compelled to take the hastiest of flying shots at his author, naturally he demanded a very conspicuous mark to fire at. but the author could not, in so brief a space, be always sure to crowd any very prominent objects on the eye, unless by being audaciously oracular and peremptory as regarded the sentiment, or flashy in excess as regarded its expression. "come now, my friend," was lord chesterfield's morning adjuration to his author;" come now, cut it short--don't prose--don't hum and haw. "the author had doubtless no ambition to enter his name on the honorable and ancient roll of gentlemen prosers; probably he conceived himself not at all tainted with the asthmatic infirmity of humming and hawing; but, as to "cutting it short," how could he be sure of meeting his lordship's expectations in that point, unless by dismissing the limitations that might be requisite to fit the idea for use, or the adjuncts that might be requisite to integrate its truth, or the final consequences that might involve some deep _arriere pensee_, which, coming last in the succession, might oftentimes be calculated to lie deepest on the mind. to be lawfully and usefully brilliant after this rapid fashion, a man must come forward as a refresher of old truths, where _his_ suppressions are supplied by the reader's memory; not as an expounder of new truths, where oftentimes a dislocated fraction of the true is more dangerous than the false itself. to read therefore habitually, by hurried instalments, has this bad tendency--that it is likely to found a taste for modes of composition too artificially irritating, and to disturb the equilibrium of the judgment in relation to the colorings of style. lamb, however, whose constitution of mind was even ideally sound in reference to the natural, the simple, the genuine, might seem of all men least liable to a taint in this direction. and undoubtedly he _was_ so, as regarded those modes of beauty which nature had specially qualified him for apprehending. else, and in relation to other modes of beauty, where his sense of the true, and of its distinction from the spurious, had been an acquired sense, it is impossible for us to hide from ourselves--that not through habits only, not through stress of injurious accidents only, but by original structure and temperament of mind, lamb had a bias towards those very defects on which rested the startling characteristics of style which we have been noticing. he himself, we fear, not bribed by indulgent feelings to another, not moved by friendship, but by native tendency, shrank from the continuous, from the sustained, from the elaborate. the elaborate, indeed, without which much truth and beauty must perish in germ, was by name the object of his invectives. the instances are many, in his own beautiful essays, where he literally collapses, literally sinks away from openings suddenly offering themselves to flights of pathos or solemnity in direct prosecution of his own theme. on any such summons, where an ascending impulse, and an untired pinion were required, he _refuses_ himself (to use military language) invariably. the least observing reader of _elia_ cannot have failed to notice that the most felicitous passages always accomplish their circuit in a few sentences. the gyration within which his sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always the shortest possible. it does not prolong itself, and it does not repeat itself. but in fact, other features in lamb's mind would have argued this feature by analogy, had we by accident been left unaware of it directly. it is not by chance, or without a deep ground in his nature, _common_ to all his qualities, both affirmative and negative, that lamb had an insensibility to music more absolute than can have been often shared by any human creature, or perhaps than was ever before acknowledged so candidly. the sense of music,--as a pleasurable sense, or as any sense at all other than of certain unmeaning and impertinent differences in respect to high and low, sharp or flat, --was utterly obliterated as with a sponge by nature herself from lamb's organization. it was a corollary, from the same large _substratum_ in his nature, that lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose composition. rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or sonorous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, were effects of art as much thrown away upon him as the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. we ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposition to that of lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected this omission in lamb's nature at an early stage of our acquaintance. not the fabled regulus, with his eyelids torn away, and his uncurtained eye-balls exposed to the noon-tide glare of a carthaginian sun, could have shrieked with more anguish of recoil from torture than we from certain sentences and periods in which lamb perceived no fault at all. _pomp_, in our apprehension, was an idea of two categories; the pompous might be spurious, but it might also be genuine. it is well to love the simple--_we_ love it; nor is there any opposition at all between _that_ and the very glory of pomp. but, as we once put the case to lamb, if, as a musician, as the leader of a mighty orchestra, you had this theme offered to you--"belshazzar the king gave a great feast to a thousand of his lords"--or this," and on a certain day, marcus cicero stood up, and in a set speech rendered solemn thanks to caius caesar for quintus ligarius pardoned, and for marcus marcellus restored "--surely no man would deny that, in such a case, simplicity, though in a passive sense not lawfully absent, must stand aside as totally insufficient for the positive part. simplicity might guide, even here, but could not furnish the power; a rudder it might be, but not an oar or a sail. this, lamb was ready to allow; as an intellectual _quiddity_, he recognized pomp in the character of a privileged thing; he was obliged to do so; for take away from great ceremonial festivals, such as the solemn rendering of thanks, the celebration of national anniversaries, the commemoration of public benefactors, &c., the element of pomp, and you take away their very meaning and life; but, whilst allowing a place for it in the rubric of the logician, it is certain that, _sensuously_, lamb would not have sympathized with it, nor have _felt_ its justification in any concrete instance. we find a difficulty in pursuing this subject, without greatly exceeding our limits. we pause, therefore, and add only this one suggestion as partly explanatory of the case. lamb had the dramatic intellect and taste, perhaps in perfection; of the epic, he had none at all. here, as happens sometimes to men of genius preternaturally endowed in one direction, he might be considered as almost starved. a favorite of nature, so eminent in some directions, by what right could he complain that her bounties were not indiscriminate? from this defect in his nature it arose, that, except by culture and by reflection, lamb had no genial appreciation of milton. the solemn planetary wheelings of the paradise lost were not to his taste. what he _did_ comprehend, were the motions like those of lightning, the fierce angular coruscations of that wild agency which comes forward so vividly in the sudden _peripetteia_, in the revolutionary catastrophe, and in the tumultuous conflicts, through persons or through situations, of the tragic drama. there is another vice in mr. hazlitt's mode of composition, viz., the habit of trite quotation, too common to have challenged much notice, were it not for these reasons: 1st, that sergeant talfourd speaks of it in equivocal terms, as a fault perhaps, but as a "felicitous" fault, "trailing after it a line of golden associations;" 2dly, because the practice involves a dishonesty. on occasion of no. 1, we must profess our belief that a more ample explanation from the sergeant would have left him in substantial harmony with ourselves. we cannot conceive the author of ion, and the friend of wordsworth, seriously to countenance that paralytic "mouth-diarrhoea," (to borrow a phrase of coleridge's)--that _fluxe de bouche_(to borrow an earlier phrase of archbishop huet's) which places the reader at the mercy of a man's tritest remembrances from his most school-boy reading. to have the verbal memory infested with tags of verse and "cues" of rhyme is in itself an infirmity as vulgar and as morbid as the stableboy's habit of whistling slang airs upon the mere mechanical excitement of a bar or two whistled by some other blockhead in some other stable. the very stage has grown weary of ridiculing a folly, that having been long since expelled from decent society has taken refuge amongst the most imbecile of authors. was mr. hazlitt then of that class? no; he was a man of great talents, and of capacity for greater things than he ever attempted, though without any pretensions of the philosophic kind ascribed to him by the sergeant. meantime the reason for resisting the example and practice of hazlitt lies in this--that essentially it is at war with sincerity, the foundation of all good writing, to express one's own thoughts by another man's words. this dilemma arises. the thought is, or it is not, worthy of that emphasis which belongs to a metrical expression of it. if it is _not_, then we shall be guilty of a mere folly in pushing into strong relief that which confessedly cannot support it. if it _is_, then how incredible that a thought strongly conceived, and bearing about it the impress of one's own individuality, should naturally, and without dissimulation or falsehood, bend to another man's expression of it! simply to back one's own view by a similar view derived from another, may be useful; a quotation that repeats one's own sentiment, but in a varied form, has the grace which belongs to the _idem in alio_, the same radical idea expressed with a difference--similarity in dissimilarity; but to throw one's own thoughts, matter, and form, through alien organs so absolutely as to make another man one's interpreter for evil and good, is either to confess a singular laxity of thinking that can so flexibly adapt itself to any casual form of words, or else to confess that sort of carelessness about the expression which draws its real origin from a sense of indifference about the things to be expressed. utterly at war this distressing practice is with all simplicity and earnestness of writing; it argues a state of indolent ease inconsistent with the pressure and coercion of strong fermenting thoughts, before we can be at leisure for idle or chance quotations. but lastly, in reference to no. 2, we must add that the practice is signally dishonest. it "trails after it a line of golden associations." yes, and the burglar, who leaves an army-tailor's after a midnight visit, trails after him perhaps a long roll of gold bullion epaulettes which may look pretty by lamplight. but _that_, in the present condition of moral philosophy amongst the police, is accounted robbery; and to benefit too much by quotations is little less. at this moment we have in our eye a work, at one time not without celebrity, which is one continued _cento_ of splendid passages from other people. the natural effect from so much fine writing is, that the reader rises with the impression of having been engaged upon a most eloquent work. meantime the whole is a series of mosaics; a tessellation made up from borrowed fragments: and first, when the reader's attention is expressly directed upon the fact, he becomes aware that the nominal author has contributed nothing more to the book than a few passages of transition or brief clauses of connection. in the year 1796, the main incident occurring of any importance for english literature was the publication by southey of an epic poem. this poem, the _joan of arc_, was the earliest work of much pretension amongst all that southey wrote; and by many degrees it was the worst. in the four great narrative poems of his later years, there is a combination of two striking qualities, viz., a peculiar command over the _visually_ splendid, connected with a deep-toned grandeur of moral pathos. especially we find this union in the _thalaba_ and the _roderick_; but in the _joan of arc_ we miss it. what splendor there is for the fancy and the eye belongs chiefly to the vision, contributed by coleridge, and this was subsequently withdrawn. the fault lay in southey's political relations at that era; his sympathy with the french revolution in its earlier stages had been boundless; in all respects it was a noble sympathy, fading only as the gorgeous coloring faded from the emblazonries of that awful event, drooping only when the promises of that golden dawn sickened under stationary eclipse. in 1796, southey was yet under the tyranny of his own earliest fascination: in _his_ eyes the revolution had suffered a momentary blight from refluxes of panic; but blight of some kind is incident to every harvest on which human hopes are suspended. bad auguries were also ascending from the unchaining of martial instincts. but that the revolution, having ploughed its way through unparalleled storms, was preparing to face other storms, did but quicken the apprehensiveness of his love--did but quicken the duty of giving utterance to this love. hence came the rapid composition of the poem, which cost less time in writing than in printing. hence, also, came the choice of his heroine. what he needed in his central character was, a heart with a capacity for the wrath of hebrew prophets applied to ancient abuses, and for evangelic pity applied to the sufferings of nations. this heart, with this double capacity--where should he seek it? a french heart it must be, or how should it follow with its sympathies a french movement? _there_ lay southey's reason for adopting the maid of orleans as the depositary of hopes and aspirations on behalf of france as fervid as his own. in choosing this heroine, so inadequately known at that time, southey testified at least his own nobility of feeling; [endnote: 3] but in executing his choice, he and his friends overlooked two faults fatal to his purpose. one was this: sympathy with the french revolution meant sympathy with the opening prospects of man--meant sympathy with the pariah of every clime--with all that suffered social wrong, or saddened in hopeless bondage. that was the movement at work in the french revolution. but the movement of joanne d'arc took a different direction. in her day also, it is true, the human heart had yearned after the same vast enfranchisement for the children of labor as afterwards worked in the great vision of the french revolution. in her days also, and shortly before them, the human hand had sought by bloody acts to realize this dream of the heart. and in her childhood, joanna had not been insensible to these premature motions upon a path too bloody and too dark to be safe. but this view of human misery had been utterly absorbed to _her_ by the special misery then desolating france. the lilies of france had been trampled under foot by the conquering stranger. within fifty years, in three pitched battles that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of france had been exterminated. her oriflamme had been dragged through the dust. the eldest son of baptism had been prostrated. the daughter of france had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her english conqueror. the child of that marriage, so ignominious to the land, was king of france by the consent of christendom; that child's uncle domineered as regent of france; and that child's armies were in military possession of the land. but were they undisputed masters? no; and there precisely lay the sorrow of the time. under a perfect conquest there would have been repose; whereas the presence of the english armies did but furnish a plea, masking itself in patriotism, for gatherings everywhere of lawless marauders; of soldiers that had deserted their banners; and of robbers by profession. this was the woe of france more even than the military dishonor. that dishonor had been palliated from the first by the genealogical pretensions of the english royal family to the french throne, and these pretensions were strengthened in the person of the present claimant. but the military desolation of france, this it was that woke the faith of joanna in her own heavenly mission of deliverance. it was the attitude of her prostrate country, crying night and day for purification from blood, and not from feudal oppression, that swallowed up the thoughts of the impassioned girl. but _that_ was not the cry that uttered itself afterwards in the french revolution. in joanna's days, the first step towards rest for france was by expulsion of the foreigner. independence of a foreign yoke, liberation as between people and people, was the one ransom to be paid for french honor and peace. _that_ debt settled, there might come a time for thinking of civil liberties. but this time was not within the prospects of the poor shepherdess the field--the area of her sympathies never coincided with that of the revolutionary period. it followed therefore, that southey _could_ not have raided joanna (with her condition of feeling) by any management, into the interpreter of his own. that was the first error in his poem, and it was irremediable. the second was--and strangely enough this also escaped notice--that the heroine of southey is made to close her career precisely at the point when its grandeur commences. she believed herself to have a mission for the deliverance of france; and the great instrument which she was authorized to use towards this end, was the king, charles vii. him she was to crown. with this coronation, her triumph, in the plain historical sense, ended. and _there_ ends southey's poem. but exactly at this point, the grander stage of her mission commences, viz., the ransom which she, a solitary girl, paid in her own person for the national deliverance. the grander half of the story was thus sacrificed, as being irrelevant to southey's political object; and yet, after all, the half which he retained did not at all symbolize that object. it is singular, indeed, to find a long poem, on an ancient subject, adapting itself hieroglyphically to a modern purpose; 2dly, to find it failing of this purpose; and 3dly, if it had not failed, so planned that it could have succeeded only by a sacrifice of all that was grandest in the theme. to these capital oversights, southey, coleridge, and lamb, were all joint parties; the two first as concerned in the composition, the last as a frank though friendly reviewer of it in his private correspondence with coleridge. it is, however, some palliation of these oversights, and a very singular fact in itself, that neither from english authorities nor from french, though the two nations were equally brought into close connection with the career of that extraordinary girl, could any adequate view be obtained of her character and acts. the official records of her trial, apart from which nothing can be depended upon, were first in the course of publication from the paris press during the currency of last year. first in 1847, about four hundred and sixteen years after her ashes had been dispersed to the winds, could it be seen distinctly, through the clouds of fierce partisanships and national prejudices, what had been the frenzy of the persecution against her, and the utter desolation of her position; what had been the grandeur of her conscientious resistance. anxious that our readers should see lamb from as many angles as possible, we have obtained from an old friend of his a memorial--slight, but such as the circumstances allowed--of an evening spent with charles and mary lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. the record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from charles lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. but the more unpretending this record is, the more appropriate it becomes by that very fact to the memory of _him_ who, amongst all authors, was the humblest and least pretending. we have often thought that the famous epitaph written for his grave by piron, the cynical author of _la metromanie_, might have come from lamb, were it not for one objection; lamb's benign heart would have recoiled from a sarcasm, however effective, inscribed upon a grave-stone; or from a jest, however playful, that tended to a vindictive sneer amongst his own farewell words. we once translated this piron epitaph into a kind of rambling drayton couplet; and the only point needing explanation is, that, from the accident of scientific men, fellows of the royal society being usually very solemn men, with an extra chance, therefore, for being dull men in conversation, naturally it arose that some wit amongst our great-grandfathers translated f. r. s. into a short-hand expression for a fellow remarkably stupid; to which version of the three letters our english epitaph alludes. the french original of piron is this: "ci git piron; qui ne fut rien; pas meme acadamicien." the bitter arrow of the second line was feathered to hit the french acadamie, who had declined to elect him a member. our translation is this: "here lies piron; who was--nothing; or, if _that_ could be, was less: how!--nothing? yes, nothing; not so much as f. r. s." but now to our friend's memorandum: october 6, 1848. my dear x.--you ask me for some memorial, however trivial, of any dinner party, supper party, water party, no matter what, that i can circumstantially recall to recollection, by any features whatever, puns or repartees, wisdom or wit, connecting it with charles lamb. i grieve to say that my meetings of any sort with lamb were few, though spread through a score of years. that sounds odd for one that loved lamb so entirely, and so much venerated his character. but the reason was, that i so seldom visited london, and lamb so seldom quitted it. somewhere about 1810 and 1812 i must have met lamb repeatedly at the _courier office_ in the strand; that is, at coleridge's, to whom, as an intimate friend, mr. stuart (a proprietor of the paper) gave up for a time the use of some rooms in the office. thither, in the london season, (may especially and june,) resorted lamb, godwin, sir h. davy, and, once or twice, wordsworth, who visited sir george beaumont's leicestershire residence of coleorton early in the spring, and then travelled up to grosvenor square with sir george and lady beaumont; _spectatum veniens, veniens spectetur ut ipse_. but in these miscellaneous gatherings, lamb said little, except when an opening arose for a pun. and how effectual that sort of small shot was from _him_, i need not say to anybody who remembers his infirmity of stammering, and his dexterous management of it for purposes of light and shade. he was often able to train the roll of stammers into settling upon the words immediately preceding the effective one; by which means the key-note of the jest or sarcasm, benefiting by the sudden liberation of his embargoed voice, was delivered with the force of a pistol shot. that stammer was worth an annuity to him as an ally of his wit. firing under cover of that advantage, he did triple execution; for, in the first place, the distressing sympathy of the hearers with _his_ distress of utterance won for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention; and then, whilst he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of mute suspense by an appearance of distress that he perhaps did not really feel, down came a plunging shot into the very thick of us, with ten times the effect it would else have had. if his stammering, however, often did him true "yeoman's service," sometimes it led him into scrapes. coleridge told me of a ludicrous embarrassment which it caused him at hastings. lamb had been medically advised to a course of sea-bathing; and accordingly at the door of his bathing machine, whilst he stood shivering with cold, two stout fellows laid hold of him, one at each shoulder, like heraldic supporters; they waited for the word of command from their principal, who began the following oration to them: "hear me, men! take notice of this--i am to be dipped." what more he would have said is unknown to land or sea or bathing machines; for having reached the word dipped, he commenced such a rolling fire of di--di--di--di, that when at length he descended _a plomb_ upon the full word _dipped_, the two men, rather tired of the long suspense, became satisfied that they had reached what lawyers call the "operative" clause of the sentence; and both exclaiming at once, "oh yes, sir, we're quite aware of _that_," down they plunged him into the sea. on emerging, lamb sobbed so much from the cold, that he found no voice suitable to his indignation; from necessity he seemed tranquil; and again addressing the men, who stood respectfully listening, he began thus: "men! is it possible to obtain your attention?" "oh surely, sir, by all means." "then listen: once more i tell you, i am to be di--di--di--"--and then, with a burst of indignation," dipped, i tell you,"--"oh decidedly, sir," rejoined the men, "decidedly," and down the stammerer went for the second time. petrified with cold and wrath, once more lamb made a feeble attempt at explanation--" grant me pa--pa--patience; is it mum--um--murder you me--me--mean? again and a--ga--ga--gain, i tell you, i'm to be di--di--di--dipped," now speaking furiously, with the voice of an injured man. "oh yes, sir," the men replied, "we know that, we fully understood it," and for the third time down went lamb into the sea." oh limbs of satan!" he said, on coming up for the third time, "it's now too late; i tell you that i am--no, that i _was_--to be di--di--di--dipped only _once_." since the rencontres with lamb at coleridge's, i had met him once or twice at literary dinner parties. one of these occurred at the house of messrs. taylor & hessey, the publishers. i myself was suffering too much from illness at the time to take any pleasure in what passed, or to notice it with any vigilance of attention. lamb, i remember, as usual, was full of gayety; and as usual he rose too rapidly to the zenith of his gayety; for he shot upwards like a rocket, and, as usual, people said he was "tipsy." to me lamb never seemed intoxicated, but at most arborily elevated. he never talked nonsense, which is a great point gained; nor polemically, which is a greater; for it is a dreadful thing to find a drunken man bent upon converting oneself; nor sentimentally, which is greatest of all. you can stand a man's fraternizing with you; or if he swears an eternal friendship, only once in an hour, you do not think of calling the police; but once in every three minutes is too much (period omitted here in original, but there is a double space following for a new sentence) lamb did none of these things; he was always rational, quiet, and gentlemanly in his habits. nothing memorable, i am sure, passed upon this occasion, which was in november of 1821; and yet the dinner was memorable by means of one fact not discovered until many years later. amongst the company, all literary men, sate a murderer, and a murderer of a freezing class; cool, calculating, wholesale in his operations, and moving all along under the advantages of unsuspecting domestic confidence and domestic opportunities. this was mr. wainwright, who was subsequently brought to trial, but not for any of his murders, and transported for life. the story has been told both by sergeant talfourd, in the second volume of these "final memoirs," and previously by sir edward b. lytton. both have been much blamed for the use made of this extraordinary case; but we know not why. in itself it is a most remarkable case for more reasons than one. it is remarkable for the appalling revelation which it makes of power spread through the hands of people not liable to suspicion, for purposes the most dreadful. it is remarkable also by the contrast which existed in this case between the murderer's appearance and the terrific purposes with which he was always dallying. he was a contributor to a journal in which i also had written several papers. this formed a shadowy link between us; and, ill as i was, i looked more attentively at _him_ than at anybody else. yet there were several men of wit and genius present, amongst whom lamb (as i have said) and thomas hood, hamilton reynolds, and allan cunningham. but _them_ i already knew, whereas mr. w. i now saw for the first time and the last. what interested me about _him_ was this, the papers which had been pointed out to me as his, (signed _janus weathercock, vinklooms_, &c.) were written in a spirit of coxcombry that did not so much disgust as amuse. the writer could not conceal the ostentatious pleasure which he took in the luxurious fittings-up of his rooms, in the fancied splendor of his _bijouterie_, &c. yet it was easy for a man of any experience to read two facts in all this idle _etalage_; one being, that his finery was but of a second-rate order; the other, that he was a parvenu, not at home even amongst his second-rate splendor. so far there was nothing to distinguish mr. w--'s papers from the papers of other triflers. but in this point there was, viz., that in his judgments upon the great italian masters of painting, da vinci, titian, &c., there seemed a tone of sincerity and of native sensibility, as in one who spoke from himself, and was not merely a copier from books. this it was that interested me; as also his reviews of the chief italian engravers, morghen, volpato, &c.; not for the manner, which overflowed with levities and impertinence, but for the substance of his judgments in those cases where i happened to have had an opportunity of judging for myself. here arose also a claim upon lamb's attention; for lamb and his sister had a deep feeling for what was excellent in painting. accordingly lamb paid him a great deal of attention, and continued to speak of him for years with an interest that seemed disproportioned to his pretensions. this might be owing in part to an indirect compliment paid to miss lamb in one of w--'s papers; else his appearance would rather have repelled lamb; it was commonplace, and better suited to express the dandyism which overspread the surface of his manner, than the unaffected sensibility which apparently lay in his nature. dandy or not, however, this man, on account of the schism in his papers, so much amiable puppyism on one side, so much deep feeling on the other, (feeling, applied to some of the grandest objects that earth has to show,) did really move a trifle of interest in me, on a day when i hated the face of man and woman. yet again, if i had known this man for the murderer that even then he was, what sudden loss of interest, what sudden growth of another interest, would have changed the face of that party! trivial creature, that didst carry thy dreadful eye kindling with perpetual treasons! dreadful creature, that didst carry thy trivial eye, mantling with eternal levity, over the sleeping surfaces of confiding household life--oh, what a revolution for man wouldst thou have accomplished had thy deep wickedness prospered! what _was_ that wickedness? in a few words i will say. at this time (october, 1848) the whole british island is appalled by a new chapter in the history of poisoning. locusta in ancient rome, madame brinvilliers in paris, were people of original genius: not in any new artifice of toxicology, not in the mere management of poisons, was the audacity of their genius displayed. no; but in profiting by domestic openings for murder, unsuspected through their very atrocity. such an opening was made some years ago by those who saw the possibility of founding purses for parents upon the murder of their children. this was done upon a larger scale than had been suspected, and upon a plausible pretence. to bury a corpse is costly; but of a hundred children only a few, in the ordinary course of mortality, will die within a given time. five shillings a-piece will produce 25l annually, and _that_ will bury a considerable number. on this principle arose infant burial societies. for a few shillings annually, a parent could secure a funeral for every child. if the child died, a few guineas fell due to the parent, and the funeral was accomplished without cost of _his_. but on this arose the suggestion--why not execute an insurance of this nature twenty times over? one single insurance pays for the funeral--the other nineteen are so much clear gain, a _lucro ponatur_, for the parents. yes; but on the supposition that the child died! twenty are no better than one, unless they are gathered into the garner. now, if the child died naturally, all was right; but how, if the child did _not_ die? why, clearly this, --the child that _can_ die, and won't die, may be made to die. there are many ways of doing that; and it is shocking to know, that, according to recent discoveries, poison is comparatively a very merciful mode of murder. six years ago a dreadful communication was made to the public by a medical man, viz., that three thousand children were annually burned to death under circumstances showing too clearly that they had been left by their mothers with the means and the temptations to set themselves on fire in her absence. but more shocking, because more lingering, are the deaths by artificial appliances of wet, cold, hunger, bad diet, and disturbed sleep, to the frail constitutions of children. by that machinery it is, and not by poison, that the majority qualify themselves for claiming the funeral allowances. here, however, there occur to any man, on reflection, two eventual restraints on the extension of this domestic curse:--1st, as there is no pretext for wanting more than one funeral on account of one child, any insurances beyond one are in themselves a ground of suspicion. now, if any plan were devised for securing the _publication_ of such insurances, the suspicions would travel as fast as the grounds for them. 2dly, it occurs, that eventually the evil checks itself, since a society established on the ordinary rates of mortality would be ruined when a murderous stimulation was applied to that rate too extensively. still it is certain that, for a season, this atrocity _has_ prospered in manufacturing districts for some years, and more recently, as judicial investigations have shown, in one agricultural district of essex. now, mr. w--'s scheme of murder was, in its outline, the very same, but not applied to the narrow purpose of obtaining burials from a public fund he persuaded, for instance, two beautiful young ladies, visitors in his family, to insure their lives for a short period of two years. this insurance was repeated in several different offices, until a sum of 18,000 pounds had been secured in the event of their deaths within the two years. mr. w--took care that they _should_ die, and very suddenly, within that period; and then, having previously secured from his victims an assignment to himself of this claim, he endeavored to make this assignment available. but the offices, which had vainly endeavored to extract from the young ladies any satisfactory account of the reasons for this limited insurance, had their suspicions at last strongly roused. one office had recently experienced a case of the same nature, in which also the young lady had been poisoned by the man in whose behalf she had effected the insurance; all the offices declined to pay; actions at law arose; in the course of the investigation which followed, mr. w--'s character was fully exposed. finally, in the midst of the embarrassments which ensued, he committed forgery, and was transported. from this mr. w--, some few days afterwards, i received an invitation to a dinner party, expressed in terms that were obligingly earnest. he mentioned the names of his principal guests, and amongst them rested most upon those of lamb and sir david wilkie. from an accident i was unable to attend, and greatly regretted it. sir david one might rarely happen to see, except at a crowded party. but as regarded lamb, i was sure to see him or to hear of him again in some way or other within a short time. this opportunity, in fact, offered itself within a month through the kindness of the lambs themselves. they had heard of my being in solitary lodgings, and insisted on my coming to dine with them, which more than once i did in the winter of 1821-22. the mere reception by the lambs was so full of goodness and hospitable feeling, that it kindled animation in the most cheerless or torpid of invalids. i cannot imagine that any _memorabilia_ occurred during the visit; but i will use the time that would else be lost upon the settling of that point, in putting down any triviality that occurs to my recollection. both lamb and myself had a furious love for nonsense, headlong nonsense. excepting professor wilson, i have known nobody who had the same passion to the same extent. and things of that nature better illustrate the _realities_ of lamb's social life than the gravities, which weighing so sadly on his solitary hours he sought to banish from his moments of relaxation. there were no strangers; charles lamb, his sister, and myself made up the party. even this was done in kindness. they knew that i should have been oppressed by an effort such as must be made in the society of strangers; and they placed me by their own fireside, where i could say as little or as much as i pleased. we dined about five o'clock, and it was one of the hospitalities inevitable to the lambs, that any game which they might receive from rural friends in the course of the week, was reserved for the day of a friend's dining with them. in regard to wine, lamb and myself had the same habit--perhaps it rose to the dignity of a principle--viz., to take a great deal _during_ dinner--none _after_ it. consequently, as miss lamb (who drank only water) retired almost with the dinner itself, nothing remained for men of our principles, the rigor of which we had illustrated by taking rather too much of old port before the cloth was drawn, except talking; amoebaean colloquy, or, in dr. johnson's phrase, a dialogue of "brisk reciprocation." but this was impossible; over lamb, at this period of his life, there passed regularly, after taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. it descended upon him as softly as a shadow. in a gross person, laden with superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this would have been disagreeable; but in lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry as an arab of the desert, or as thomas aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a network of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb--more like a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. motionless in his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly alive, he presented the image of repose midway between life and death, like the repose of sculpture; and to one who knew his history a repose affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal storms of his life. i have heard more persons than i can now distinctly recall, observe of lamb when sleeping, that his countenance in that state assumed an expression almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike simplicity, and its benignity. it could not be called a transfiguration that sleep had worked in his face; for the features wore essentially the same expression when waking; but sleep spiritualized that expression, exalted it, and also harmonized it. much of the change lay in that last process. the eyes it was that disturbed the unity of effect in lamb's waking face. they gave a restlessness to the character of his intellect, shifting, like northern lights, through every mode of combination with fantastic playfulness, and sometimes by fiery gleams obliterating for the moment that pure light of benignity which was the predominant reading on his features. some people have supposed that lamb had jewish blood in his veins, which seemed to account for his gleaming eyes. it might be so; but this notion found little countenance in lamb's own way of treating the gloomy medieval traditions propagated throughout europe about the jews, and their secret enmity to christian races. lamb, indeed, might not be more serious than shakspeare is supposed to have been in his shylock; yet he spoke at times as from a station of wilful bigotry, and seemed (whether laughingly or not) to sympathize with the barbarous christian superstitions upon the pretended bloody practices of the jews, and of the early jewish physicians. being himself a lincoln man, he treated sir hugh [endnote: 4] of lincoln, the young child that suffered death by secret assassination in the jewish quarter rather than suppress his daily anthems to the virgin, as a true historical personage on the rolls of martyrdom; careless that this fable, like that of the apprentice murdered out of jealousy by his master, the architect, had destroyed its own authority by ubiquitous diffusion. all over europe the same legend of the murdered apprentice and the martyred child reappears under different names--so that in effect the verification of the tale is none at all, because it is unanimous; is too narrow, because it is too impossibly broad. lamb, however, though it was often hard to say whether he were not secretly laughing, swore to the truth of all these old fables, and treated the liberalities of the present generation on such points as mere fantastic and effeminate affectations, which, no doubt, they often are as regards the sincerity of those who profess them. the bigotry, which it pleased his fancy to assume, he used like a sword against the jew, as the official weapon of the christian, upon the same principle that a capulet would have drawn upon a montague, without conceiving it any duty of _his_ to rip up the grounds of so ancient a quarrel; it was a feud handed down to him by his ancestors, and it was _their_ business to see that originally it had been an honest feud. i cannot yet believe that lamb, if seriously aware of any family interconnection with jewish blood, would, even in jest, have held that one-sided language. more probable it is, that the fiery eye recorded not any alliance with jewish blood, but that disastrous alliance with insanity which tainted his own life, and laid desolate his sister's. on awakening from his brief slumber, lamb sat for some time in profound silence, and then, with the most startling rapidity, sang out--"diddle, diddle, dumpkins;" not looking at me, but as if soliloquizing. for five minutes he relapsed into the same deep silence; from which again he started up into the same abrupt utterance of--"diddle, diddle, dumpkins." i could not help laughing aloud at the extreme energy of this sudden communication, contrasted with the deep silence that went before and followed. lamb smilingly begged to know what i was laughing at, and with a look of as much surprise as if it were i that had done something unaccountable, and not himself. i told him (as was the truth) that there had suddenly occurred to me the possibility of my being in some future period or other called on to give an account of this very evening before some literary committee. the committee might say to me--(supposing the case that i outlived him)--"you dined with mr. lamb in january, 1822; now, can you remember any remark or memorable observation which that celebrated man made before or after dinner?" i as _respondent_. "oh yes, i can." _com_. "what was it?" _resp_. "diddle, diddle, dumpkins." _com_. "and was this his only observation? did mr. lamb not strengthen this remark by some other of the same nature?" _resp_. "yes, he did." _com_. "and what was it?" _resp_. "diddle, diddle, dumpkins." _com_. "what is your secret opinion of dumpkins?" _com_. "do you conceive dumpkins to have been a thing or a person?" _resp_. "i conceive dumpkins to have been a person, having the rights of a person." _com_. "capable, for instance, of suing and being sued?" _resp_. "yes, capable of both; though i have reason to think there would have been very little use in suing dumpkins." _com_. "how so? are the committee to understand that you, the respondent, in your own case, have found it a vain speculation, countenanced only by visionary lawyers, to sue dumpkins?" _resp_. "no; i never lost a shilling by dumpkins, the reason for which may be that dumpkins never owed me a shilling; but from his _pronomen_ of 'diddle,' i apprehend that he was too well acquainted with joint-stock companies!" _com_. "and your opinion is, that he may have diddled mr. lamb?" _resp_. "i conceive it to be not unlikely." _com_. "and, perhaps, from mr. lamb's pathetic reiteration of his name, 'diddle, diddle,' you would be disposed to infer that dumpkins had practised his diddling talents upon mr. l. more than once?" _resp_. "i think it probable." lamb laughed, and brightened up; tea was announced; miss lamb returned. the cloud had passed away from lamb's spirits, and again he realized the pleasure of evening, which, in _his_ apprehension, was so essential to the pleasure of literature. on the table lay a copy of wordsworth, in two volumes; it was the edition of longman, printed about the time of waterloo. wordsworth was held in little consideration, i believe, amongst the house of longman; at any rate, _their_ editions of his works were got up in the most slovenly manner. in particular, the table of contents was drawn up like a short-hand bill of parcels. by accident the book lay open at a part of this table, where the sonnet beginning- "alas! what boots the long laborious quest"-had been entered with mercantile speed, as- "alas! what boots,"---"yes," said lamb, reading this entry in a dolorous tone of voice, "he may well say _that_. i paid hoby three guineas for a pair that tore like blotting paper, when i was leaping a ditch to escape a farmer that pursued me with a pitch-fork for trespassing. but why should w. wear boots in westmoreland? pray, advise him to patronize shoes." the mercurialities of lamb were infinite, and always uttered in a spirit of absolute recklessness for the quality or the prosperity of the sally. it seemed to liberate his spirits from some burthen of blackest melancholy which oppressed it, when he had thrown off a jest: he would not stop one instant to improve it; nor did he care the value of a straw whether it were good enough to be remembered, or so mediocre as to extort high moral indignation from a collector who refused to receive into his collection of jests and puns any that were not felicitously good or revoltingly bad. after tea, lamb read to me a number of beautiful compositions, which he had himself taken the trouble to copy out into a blank paper folio from unsuccessful authors. neglected people in every class won the sympathy of lamb. one of the poems, i remember, was a very beautiful sonnet from a volume recently published by lord thurlow--which, and lamb's just remarks upon it, i could almost repeat _verbatim_ at this moment, nearly twenty-seven years later, if your limits would allow me. but these, you tell me, allow of no such thing; at the utmost they allow only twelve lines more. now all the world knows that the sonnet itself would require fourteen lines; but take fourteen from twelve, and there remains very little, i fear; besides which, i am afraid two of my twelve are already exhausted. this forces me to interrupt my account of lamb's reading, by reporting the very accident that _did_ interrupt it in fact; since that no less characteristically expressed lamb's peculiar spirit of kindness, (always quickening itself towards the ill-used or the down-trodden,) than it had previously expressed itself in his choice of obscure readings. two ladies came in, one of whom at least had sunk in the scale of worldly consideration. they were ladies who would not have found much recreation in literary discussions; elderly, and habitually depressed. on _their_ account, lamb proposed whist, and in that kind effort to amuse them, which naturally drew forth some momentary gayeties from himself, but not of a kind to impress themselves on the recollection, the evening terminated. we have left ourselves no room for a special examination of lamb's writings, some of which were failures, and some were so memorably beautiful as to be unique in their class. the character of lamb it is, and the life-struggle of lamb, that must fix the attention of many, even amongst those wanting in sensibility to his intellectual merits. this character and this struggle, as we have already observed, impress many traces of themselves upon lamb's writings. even in that view, therefore, they have a ministerial value; but separately, for themselves, they have an independent value of the highest order. upon this point we gladly adopt the eloquent words of sergeant talfourd:-"the sweetness of lamb's character, breathed through his writings, was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by many of his friends. let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits? it was not merely that he saw, through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready to take her to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her through life; and he gave up, for _her_ sake, all meaner and more selfish love, and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion which disturbs and ennobles it; not even that he did all this cheerfully, without pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long repining; but that he carried the spirit of the hour in which he first knew and took his course to his last. so far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a license to follow his own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy." it must be remembered, also, which the sergeant does not overlook, that lamb's efforts for the becoming support of his sister lasted through a period of forty years. twelve years before his death, the munificence of the india house, by granting him a liberal retiring allowance, had placed his own support under shelter from accidents of any kind. but this died with himself; and he could not venture to suppose that, in the event of his own death, the india house would grant to his sister the same allowance as by custom is granted to a wife. this they did; but not venturing to calculate upon such nobility of patronage, lamb had applied himself through life to the saving of a provision for his sister under any accident to himself. and this he did with a persevering prudence, so little known in the literary class, amongst a continued tenor of generosities, often so princely as to be scarcely known in any class. was this man, so memorably good by life-long sacrifice of himself, in any profound sense a christian? the impression is, that he was _not_. we, from private communications with him, can undertake to say that, according to his knowledge and opportunities for the study of christianity, he _was_. what has injured lamb on this point is, that his early opinions (which, however, from the first were united with the deepest piety) are read by the inattentive, as if they had been the opinions of his mature days; secondly, that he had few religious persons amongst his friends, which made him reserved in the expression of his own views; thirdly, that in any case where he altered opinions for the better, the credit of the improvement is assigned to coleridge. lamb, for example, beginning life as a unitarian, in not many years became a trinitarian. coleridge passed through the same changes in the same order; and, here, at least, lamb is supposed simply to have obeyed the influence, confessedly great, of coleridge. this, on our own knowledge of lamb's views, we pronounce to be an error. and the following extracts from lamb's letters will show, not only that he was religiously disposed on impulses self-derived, but that, so far from obeying the bias of coleridge, he ventured, on this one subject, firmly as regarded the matter, though humbly as regarded the manner, affectionately to reprove coleridge. in a letter to coleridge, written in 1797, the year after his first great affliction, he says: "coleridge, i have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance; not one christian; not one but undervalues christianity. singly, what am i to do? wesley--[have you read his life?]--was not he an elevated character? wesley has said religion was not a solitary thing. alas! it is necessarily so with me, or next to solitary. 'tis true you write to me; but correspondence by letter and personal intimacy are widely different. do, do write to me; and do some good to my mind--already how much 'warped and relaxed' by the world!" in a letter written about three months previously, he had not scrupled to blame coleridge at some length for audacities of religious speculation, which seemed to him at war with the simplicities of pure religion. he says: "do continue to write to me. i read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. especially they please us two when you talk in a religious strain. not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy than consistent with the humility of genuine piety." then, after some instances of what he blames, he says: "be not angry with me, coleridge. i wish not to cavil; i know i cannot instruct you; i only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the christian character. god, in the new testament, our best guide, is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent; and, in my poor mind, 'tis best for us so to consider him as our heavenly father, and our best friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of his character." about a month later, he says: "few but laugh at me for reading my testament. they talk a language i understand not; i conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to _them_." we see by this last quotation _where_ it was that lamb originally sought for consolation. we personally can vouch that, at a maturer period, when he was approaching his fiftieth year, no change had affected his opinions upon that point; and, on the other hand, that no changes had occurred in his needs for consolation, we see, alas! in the records of his life. whither, indeed, could he fly for comfort, if not to his bible? and to whom was the bible an indispensable resource, if not to lamb? we do not undertake to say, that in his knowledge of christianity he was everywhere profound or consistent, but he was always earnest in his aspirations after its spiritualities, and had an apprehensive sense of its power. charles lamb is gone; his life was a continued struggle in the service of love the purest, and within a sphere visited by little of contemporary applause. even his intellectual displays won but a narrow sympathy at any time, and in his earlier period were saluted with positive derision and contumely on the few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire neglect. but slowly all things right themselves. all merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sensory; reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in a selecter audience. but the original obtuseness or vulgarity of feeling that thwarted lamb's just estimation in life, will continue to thwart its popular diffusion. there are even some that continue to regard him with the old hostility. and we, therefore, standing by the side of lamb's grave, seemed to hear, on one side, (but in abated tones, ) strains of the ancient malice--"this man, that thought himself to be somebody, is dead--is buried--is forgotten!" and, on the other side, seemed to hear ascending, as with the solemnity of an anthem--"this man, that thought himself to be nobody, is dead--is buried; his life has been searched; and his memory is hallowed forever!" notes. note 1. "_scriptural_" we call it, because this element of thought, so indispensable to a profound philosophy of morals, is not simply _more_ used in scripture than elsewhere, but is so exclusively significant or intelligible amidst the correlative ideas of scripture, as to be absolutely insusceptible of translation into classical greek or classical latin. it is disgraceful that more reflection has not been directed to the vast causes and consequences of so pregnant a truth. note 2. "_poor s t. c._"-the affecting expression by which coleridge indicates himself in the few lines written during his last illness for an inscription upon his grave, lines ill constructed in point of diction and compression, but otherwise speaking from the depths of his heart. note 3. it is right to remind the reader of this, for a reason applying forcibly to the present moment michelet has taxed englishmen with yielding to national animosities in the case of joan, having no plea whatever for that insinuation but the single one drawn from shakspeare's henry vi. to this the answer is, first, that shakspeare's share in that trilogy is not nicely ascertained secondly, that m michelet forgot (or, which is far worse, _not_ forgetting it, he dissembled) the fact, that in undertaking a series of dramas upon the basis avowedly of national chronicles, and for the very purpose of profiting by old traditionary recollections connected with ancestral glories, it was mere lunacy to recast the circumstances at the bidding of antiquarian research, so as entirely to disturb these glories. besides that, to shakspeare's age no such spirit of research had blossomed. writing for the stage, a man would have risked lapidation by uttering a whisper in that direction. and, even if not, what sense could there have been in openly running counter to the very motive that had originally prompted that particular class of chronicle plays? thirdly, if one englishman had, in a memorable situation, adopted the popular view of joan's conduct, (_popular_ as much in france as in england;) on the other hand, fifty years before m. michelet was writing this flagrant injustice, another englishman (viz., southey) had, in an epic poem, reversed this mis-judgment, and invested the shepherd girl with a glory nowhere else accorded to her, unless indeed by schiller. fourthly, we are not entitled to view as an _attack_ upon joanna, what, in the worst construction, is but an unexamining adoption of the contemporary historical accounts. a poet or a dramatist is not responsible for the accuracy of chronicles. but what _is_ an attack upon joan, being briefly the foulest and obscenest attempt ever made to stifle the grandeur of a great human struggle, viz., the french burlesque poem of _la pucelle_--what memorable man was it that wrote _that_? was he a frenchman, or was he not? that m. michelet should _pretend_ to have forgotten this vilest of pasquinades, is more shocking to the general sense of justice than any special untruth as to shakspeare _can_ be to the particular nationality of an englishman. note 4. the story which furnishes a basis to the fine ballad in percy's reliques, and to the canterbury tale of chaucer's lady abbess. goethe john wolfgang von goethe, a man of commanding influence in the literature of modern germany throughout the latter half of his long life, and possessing two separate claims upon our notice; one in right of his own unquestionable talents; and another much stronger, though less direct, arising out of his position, and the extravagant partisanship put forward on his behalf for the last forty years. the literary body in all countries, and for reasons which rest upon a sounder basis than that of private jealousies, have always been disposed to a republican simplicity in all that regards the assumption of rank and personal pretensions. _valeat quantum valere potest_, is the form of license to every man's ambition, coupled with its caution. let his influence and authority be commensurate with his attested value; and, because no man in the present infinity of human speculation, and the present multiformity of human power, can hope for more than a very limited superiority, there is an end at once to all _absolute_ dictatorship. the dictatorship in any case could be only _relative_, and in relation to a single department of art or knowledge; and this for a reason stronger even than that already noticed, viz., the vast extent of the field on which the intellect is now summoned to employ itself. that objection, as it applies only to the _degree_ of the difficulty, might be met by a corresponding degree of mental energy; such a thing may be supposed, at least. but another difficulty there is, of a profounder character, which cannot be so easily parried. those who have reflected at all upon the fine arts, know that power of one kind is often inconsistent, positively incompatible, with power of another kind. for example, the _dramatic_ mind is incompatible with the _epic_. and though we should consent to suppose that some intellect might arise endowed upon a scale of such angelic comprehensiveness, as to vibrate equally and indifferently towards either pole, still it is next to impossible, in the exercise and culture of the two powers, but some bias must arise which would give that advantage to the one over the other which the right arm has over the left. but the supposition, the very case put, is baseless, and countenanced by no precedent. yet, under this previous difficulty, and with regard to a literature convulsed, if any ever was, by an almost total anarchy, it is a fact notorious to all who take an interest in germany and its concerns, that goethe did in one way or other, through the length and breadth of that vast country, establish a supremacy of influence wholly unexampled; a supremacy indeed perilous in a less honorable man, to those whom he might chance to hate, and with regard to himself thus far unfortunate, that it conferred upon every work proceeding from his pen a sort of papal indulgence, an immunity from criticism, or even from the appeals of good sense, such as it is not wholesome that any man should enjoy. yet we repeat that german literature was and is in a condition of total anarchy. with this solitary exception, no name, even in the most narrow section of knowledge or of power, has ever been able in that country to challenge unconditional reverence; whereas, with us and in france, name the science, name the art, and we will name the dominant professor; a difference which partly arises out of the fact that england and france are governed in their opinions by two or three capital cities, whilst germany looks for its leadership to as many cities as there are _residenzen_ and universities. for instance, the little territory with which goethe was connected presented no less than two such public lights; weimar, the _residenz_ or privileged abode of the grand duke, and jena, the university founded by that house. partly, however, this difference may be due to the greater restlessness, and to the greater energy as respects mere speculation, of the german mind. but no matter whence arising, or how interpreted, the fact is what we have described; absolute confusion, the "anarch old" of milton, is the one deity whose sceptre is there paramount; and yet _there_ it was, in that very realm of chaos, that goethe built his throne. that he must have looked with trepidation and perplexity upon his wild empire and its "dark foundations," may be supposed. the tenure was uncertain to _him_ as regarded its duration; to us it is equally uncertain, and in fact mysterious, as regards its origin. meantime the mere fact, contrasted with the general tendencies of the german literary world, is sufficient to justify a notice, somewhat circumstantial, of the man in whose favor, whether naturally by force of genius, or by accident concurring with intrigue, so unexampled a result was effected. goethe was born at noonday on the 28th of august, 1749, in his father's house at frankfort on the maine. the circumstances of his birth were thus far remarkable, that, unless goethe's vanity deceived him, they led to a happy revolution hitherto retarded by female delicacy falsely directed. from some error of the midwife who attended his mother, the infant goethe appeared to be still-born. sons there were as yet none from this marriage; everybody was therefore interested in the child's life; and the panic which arose in consequence, having survived its immediate occasion, was improved into a public resolution, (for which no doubt society stood ready at that moment,) to found some course of public instruction from this time forward for those who undertook professionally the critical duties of accoucheur. we have noticed the house in which goethe was born, as well as the city. both were remarkable, and fitted to leave lasting impressions upon a young person of sensibility. as to the city, its antiquity is not merely venerable, but almost mysterious; towers were at that time to be found in the mouldering lines of its earliest defences, which belonged to the age of charlemagne, or one still earlier; battlements adapted to a mode of warfare anterior even to that of feudalism or romance. the customs, usages, and local privileges of frankfort, and the rural districts adjacent, were of a corresponding character. festivals were annually celebrated at a short distance from the walls, which had descended from a dateless antiquity. every thing which met the eye spoke the language of elder ages; whilst the river on which the place was seated, its great fair, which still held the rank of the greatest in christendom, and its connection with the throne of caesar and his inauguration, by giving to frankfort an interest and a public character in the eyes of all germany, had the effect of countersigning, as it were, by state authority, the importance which she otherwise challenged to her ancestral distinctions. fit house for such a city, and in due keeping with the general scenery, was that of goethe's father. it had in fact been composed out of two contiguous houses; that accident had made it spacious and rambling in its plan; whilst a further irregularity had grown out of the original difference in point of level between the corresponding stories of the two houses, making it necessary to connect the rooms of the same _suite_ by short flights of steps. some of these features were no doubt removed by the recast of the house under the name of "repairs," (to evade a city bye-law, ) afterwards executed by his father; but such was the house of goethe's infancy, and in all other circumstances of style and furnishing equally antique. the spirit of society in frankfort, without a court, a university, or a learned body of any extent, or a resident nobility in its neighborhood, could not be expected to display any very high standard of polish. yet, on the other hand, as an independent city, governed by its own separate laws and tribunals, (that privilege of _autonomy_ so dearly valued by ancient greece,) and possessing besides a resident corps of jurisprudents and of agents in various ranks for managing the interests of the german emperor and other princes, frankfort had the means within herself of giving a liberal tone to the pursuits of her superior citizens, and of cooperating in no inconsiderable degree with the general movement of the times, political or intellectual. the memoirs of goethe himself, and in particular the picture there given of his own family, as well as other contemporary glimpses of german domestic society in those days, are sufficient to show that much knowledge, much true cultivation of mind, much sound refinement of taste, were then distributed through the middle classes of german society; meaning by that very indeterminate expression those classes which for frankfort composed the aristocracy, viz., all who had daily leisure, and regular funds for employing it to advantage. it is not necessary to add, because that is a fact applicable to all stages of society, that frankfort presented many and various specimens of original talent, moving upon all directions of human speculation. yet, with this general allowance made for the capacities of the place, it is too evident that, for the most part, they lay inert and undeveloped. in many respects frankfort resembled an english cathedral city, according to the standard of such places seventy years ago, not, that is to say, like carlisle in this day, where a considerable manufacture exists, but like chester as it is yet. the chapter of a cathedral, the resident ecclesiastics attached to the duties of so large an establishment, men always well educated, and generally having families, compose the original _nucleus_, around which soon gathers all that part of the local gentry who, for any purpose, whether of education for their children, or of social enjoyment for themselves, seek the advantages of a town. hither resort all the timid old ladies who wish for conversation, or other forms of social amusement; hither resort the valetudinarians, male or female, by way of commanding superior medical advice at a cost not absolutely ruinous to themselves; and multitudes besides, with narrow incomes, to whom these quiet retreats are so many cities of refuge. such, in one view, they really are; and yet in another they have a vicious constitution. cathedral cities in england, imperial cities without manufactures in germany, are all in an improgressive condition. the public employments of every class in such places continue the same from generation to generation. the amount of superior families oscillates rather than changes; that is, it fluctuates within fixed limits; and, for all inferior families, being composed either of shopkeepers or of menial servants, they are determined by the number, or, which, on a large average, is the same, by the pecuniary power, of their employers. hence it arises, that room is made for one man, in whatever line of dependence, only by the death of another; and the constant increments of the population are carried off into other cities. not less is the difference of such cities as regards the standard of manners. how striking is the soft and urbane tone of the lower orders in a cathedral city, or in a watering place dependent upon ladies, contrasted with the bold, often insolent, demeanor of a self-dependent artisan or mutinous mechanic of manchester and glasgow. children, however, are interested in the state of society around them, chiefly as it affects their parents. those of goethe were respectable, and perhaps tolerably representative of the general condition in their own rank. an english authoress of great talent, in her _characteristics of goethe_, has too much countenanced the notion that he owed his intellectual advantages exclusively to his mother. of this there is no proof. his mother wins more esteem from the reader of this day, because she was a cheerful woman, of serene temper, brought into advantageous comparison with a husband much older than herself, whom circumstances had rendered moody, fitful, sometimes capricious, and confessedly obstinate in that degree which pope has taught us to think connected with inveterate error: "stiff in opinion, always in the wrong," unhappily presents an association too often actually occurring in nature, to leave much chance for error in presuming either quality from the other. and, in fact, goethe's father was so uniformly obstinate in pressing his own views upon all who belonged to him, whenever he did come forward in an attitude of activity, that his family had much reason to be thankful for the rarity of such displays. fortunately for them, his indolence neutralized his obstinacy. and the worst shape in which his troublesome temper showed itself, was in what concerned the religious reading of the family. once begun, the worst book as well as the best, the longest no less than the shortest, was to be steadfastly read through to the last word of the last volume; no excess of yawning availed to obtain a reprieve, not, adds his son, though he were himself the leader of the yawners. as an illustration, he mentions bowyer's _history of the popes_; which awful series of records, the catacombs, as it were, in the palace of history, were actually traversed from one end to the other of the endless suite by the unfortunate house of goethe. allowing, however, for the father's unamiableness in this one point, upon all intellectual ground both parents seem to have met very much upon a level. two illustrations may suffice, one of which occurred during the infancy of goethe. the science of education was at that time making its first rude motions towards an ampler development; and, amongst other reforms then floating in the general mind, was one for eradicating the childish fear of ghosts, &c. the young goethes, as it happened, slept not in separate beds only, but in separate rooms; and not unfrequently the poor children, under the stinging terrors of their lonely situation, stole away from their "forms," to speak in the hunter's phrase, and sought to rejoin each other. but in these attempts they were liable to surprises from the enemy; papa and mamma were both on the alert, and often intercepted the young deserter by a cross march or an ambuscade; in which cases each had a separate policy for enforcing obedience. the father, upon his general system of "perseverance," compelled the fugitive back to his quarters, and, in effect, exhorted him to persist in being frightened out of his wits. to his wife's gentle heart that course appeared cruel, and she reclaimed the delinquent by bribes; the peaches which her garden walls produced being the fund from which she chiefly drew her supplies for this branch of the secret service. what were her winter bribes, when the long nights would seem to lie heaviest on the exchequer, is not said. speaking seriously, no man of sense can suppose that a course of suffering from terrors the most awful, under whatever influence supported, whether under the naked force of compulsion, or of _that_ connected with bribes, could have any final effect in mitigating the passion of awe, connected, by our very dreams, with the shadowy and the invisible, or in tranquillizing the infantine imagination. a second illustration involves a great moral event in the history of goethe, as it was, in fact, the first occasion of his receiving impressions at war with his religious creed. piety is so beautiful an ornament of the youthful mind, doubt or distrust so unnatural a growth from confiding innocence, that an infant freethinker is heard of not so much with disgust as with perplexity. a sense of the ludicrous is apt to intermingle; and we lose our natural horror of the result in wonder at its origin. yet in this instance there is no room for doubt; the fact and the occasion are both on record; there can be no question about the date; and, finally, the accuser is no other than the accused. goethe's own pen it is which proclaims, that already, in the early part of his seventh year, his reliance upon god as a moral governor had suffered a violent shock, was shaken, if not undermined. on the 1st of november, 1755, occurred the great earthquake at lisbon. upon a double account, this event occupied the thoughts of all europe for an unusual term of time; both as an expression upon a larger scale than usual of the mysterious physical agency concerned in earthquakes, and also for the awful human tragedy [endnote: 5] of this no picture can ever hope to rival that hasty one sketched in the letter of the chaplain to the lisbon factory. the plague of athens as painted by thucydides or lucretius, nay even the fabulous plague of london by de foe, contain no scenes or situations equal in effect to some in this plain historic statement. nay, it would perhaps be difficult to produce a passage from ezekiel, from aeschylus, or from shakspeare, which would so profoundly startle the sense of sublimity as one or two of his incidents, which attended either the earthquake itself, or its immediate sequel in the sudden irruption of the tagus. sixty thousand persons, victims to the dark power in its first or its second _avatar_, attested the titanic scale upon which it worked. here it was that the shallow piety of the germans found a stumbling-block. those who have read any circumstantial history of the physical signs which preceded this earthquake, are aware that in england and northern germany many singular phenomena were observed, more or less manifestly connected with the same dark agency which terminated at lisbon, and running before this final catastrophe at times so accurately varying with the distances, as to furnish something like a scale for measuring the velocity with which it moved. these german phenomena, circulated rapidly over all germany by the journals of every class, had seemed to give to the germans a nearer and more domestic interest in the great event, than belonged to them merely in their universal character of humanity. it is also well known to observers of national characteristics, that amongst the germans the household charities, the _pieties of the hearth_, as they may be called, exist, if not really in greater strength, yet with much less of the usual balances or restraints. a german father, for example, is like the grandfather of other nations; and thus a piety, which in its own nature scarcely seems liable to excess, takes, in its external aspect, too often an air of effeminate imbecility. these two considerations are necessary to explain the intensity with which this lisbon tragedy laid hold of the german mind, and chiefly under the one single aspect of its _undistinguishing_ fury. women, children, old men--these, doubtless, had been largely involved in the perishing sixty thousand; and that reflection, it would seem from goethe's account, had so far embittered the sympathy of the germans with their distant portuguese brethren, that, in the frankfort discussions, sullen murmurs had gradually ripened into bold impeachments of providence. there can be no gloomier form of infidelity than that which questions the moral attributes of the great being, in whose hands are the final destinies of us all. such, however, was the form of goethe's earliest scepticism, such its origin; caught up from the very echoes which rang through the streets of frankfort when the subject occupied all men's minds. and such, for anything that appears, continued to be its form thenceforwards to the close of his life, if speculations so crude could be said to have any form at all. many are the analogies, some close ones, between england and germany with regard to the circle of changes they have run through, political or social, for a century back. the challenges are frequent to a comparison; and sometimes the result would be to the advantage of germany, more often to ours. but in religious philosophy, which in reality is the true _popular_ philosophy, how vast is the superiority on the side of this country. not a shopkeeper or mechanic, we may venture to say, but would have felt this obvious truth, that surely the lisbon earthquake yielded no fresh lesson, no peculiar moral, beyond what belonged to every man's experience in every age. a passage in the new testament about the fall of the tower of siloam, and the just construction of that event, had already anticipated the difficulty, if such it could be thought. not to mention, that calamities upon the same scale in the earliest age of christianity, the fall of the amphitheatre at fidenae, or the destruction of pompeii, had presented the same problem at the lisbon earthquake. nay, it is presented daily in the humblest individual case, where wrong is triumphant over right, or innocence confounded with guilt in one common disaster. and that the parents of goethe should have authorized his error, if only by their silence, argues a degree of ignorance in them, which could not have co-existed with much superior knowledge in the public mind. goethe, in his memoirs, (book vi.,) commends his father for the zeal with which he superintended the education of his children. but apparently it was a zeal without knowledge. many things were taught imperfectly, but all casually, and as chance suggested them. italian was studied a little, because the elder goethe had made an italian tour, and had collected some italian books, and engravings by italian masters. hebrew was studied a little, because goethe the son had a fancy for it, partly with a view to theology, and partly because there was a jewish quarter, gloomy and sequestrated, in the city of frankfort. french offered itself no doubt on many suggestions, but originally on occasion of a french theatre, supported by the staff of the french army when quartered in the same city. latin was gathered in a random way from a daily sense of its necessity. english upon the temptation of a stranger's advertisement, promising upon moderate terms to teach that language in four weeks; a proof, by the way, that the system of bold innovations in the art of tuition had already commenced. riding and fencing were also attempted under masters apparently not very highly qualified, and in the same desultory style of application. dancing was taught to his family, strange as it may seem, by mr. goethe himself. there is good reason to believe that not one of all these accomplishments was possessed by goethe, when ready to visit the university, in a degree which made it practically of any use to him. drawing and music were pursued confessedly as amusements; and it would be difficult to mention any attainment whatsoever which goethe had carried to a point of excellence in the years which he spent under his father's care, unless it were his mastery over the common artifices of metre and the common topics of rhetoric, which fitted him for writing what are called occasional poems and _impromptus_. this talent he possessed in a remarkable degree, and at an early age; but he owed its cultivation entirely to himself. in a city so orderly as frankfort, and in a station privileged from all the common hardships of poverty, it can hardly be expected that many incidents should arise, of much separate importance in themselves, to break the monotony of life; and the mind of goethe was not contemplative enough to create a value for common occurrences through any peculiar impressions which he had derived from them. in the years 1763 and 1764, when he must have been from fourteen to fifteen years old, goethe witnessed the inauguration and coronation of a king of the romans, a solemn spectacle connected by prescription with the city of frankfort. he describes it circumstantially, but with very little feeling, in his memoirs. probably the prevailing sentiment, on looking back at least to this transitory splendor of dress, processions, and ceremonial forms, was one of cynical contempt. but this he could not express, as a person closely connected with a german court, without giving much and various offence. it is with some timidity even that he hazards a criticism upon single parts of the costume adopted by some of the actors in that gorgeous scene. white silk stockings, and pumps of the common form, he objects to as out of harmony with the antique and heraldic aspects of the general costume, and ventures to suggest either boots or sandals as an improvement. had goethe felt himself at liberty from all restraints of private consideration in composing these memoirs, can it be doubted that he would have taken his retrospect of this frankfort inauguration from a different station; from the station of that stern revolution which, within his own time, and partly under his own eyes, had shattered the whole imperial system of thrones, in whose equipage this gay pageant made so principal a figure, had humbled caesar himself to the dust, and left him an emperor without an empire? we at least, for our parts, could not read without some emotion one little incident of these gorgeous scenes recorded by goethe, namely, that when the emperor, on rejoining his wife for a few moments, held up to her notice his own hands and arms arrayed in the antique habiliments of charlemagne, maria theresa--she whose children where summoned to so sad a share in the coming changes--gave way to sudden bursts of loud laughter, audible to the whole populace below her. that laugh on surveying the departing pomps of charlemagne, must, in any contemplative ear, have rung with a sound of deep significance, and with something of the same effect which belongs to a figure of death introduced by a painter, as mixing in the festal dances of a bridal assembly. these pageants of 1763-64 occupy a considerable space in goethe's memoirs, and with some _logical_ propriety at least, in consideration of their being exclusively attached to frankfort, and connected by manifold links of person and office with the privileged character of the city. perhaps he might feel a sort of narrow local patriotism in recalling these scenes to public notice by description, at a time when they had been irretrievably extinguished as realities. but, after making every allowance for their local value to a frankfort family, and for their memorable splendor, we may venture to suppose that by far the most impressive remembrances which had gathered about the boyhood of goethe, were those which pointed to frederick of prussia. this singular man, so imbecile as a pretender to philosophy and new lights, so truly heroic under misfortunes, was the first german who created a german interest, and gave a transient unity to the german name, under all its multiplied divisions. were it only for this conquest of difficulties so peculiar, he would deserve his german designation of fred. the unique, (_fritz der einzige_.) he had been partially tried and known previously; but it was the seven years' war which made him the popular idol. this began in 1756; and to frankfort, in a very peculiar way, that war brought dissensions and heart-burnings in its train. the imperial connections of the city with many public and private interests, pledged it to the anti-prussian cause. it happened also that the truly german character of the reigning imperial family, the domestic habits of the empress and her young daughters, and other circumstances, were of a nature to endear the ties of policy; self-interest and affection pointed in the same direction. and yet were all these considerations allowed to melt away before the brilliant qualities of one man, and the romantic enthusiasm kindled by his victories. frankfort was divided within herself; the young and the generous were all dedicated to frederick. a smaller party, more cautious and prudent, were for the imperialists. families were divided upon this question against families, and often against themselves; feuds, begun in private, issued often into public violence; and, according to goethe's own illustration, the streets were vexed by daily brawls, as hot and as personal as of old between the capulets and montagues. these dissensions, however, were pursued with not much personal risk to any of the goethes, until a french army passed the rhine as allies of the imperialists. one corps of this force took up their quarters in frankfort; and the comte thorane, who held a high appointment on the staff, settled himself for a long period of time in the spacious mansion of goethe's father. this officer, whom his place made responsible for the discipline of the army in relation to the citizens, was naturally by temper disposed to moderation and forbearance. he was indeed a favorable specimen of french military officers under the old system; well bred, not arrogant, well informed, and a friend of the fine arts. for painting, in particular, he professed great regard and some knowledge. the goethes were able to forward his views amongst german artists; whilst, on the other hand, they were pleased to have thus an opportunity of directing his patronage towards some of their own needy connections. in this exchange of good offices, the two parties were for some time able to maintain a fair appearance of reciprocal good-will. this on the comte's side, if not particularly warm, was probably sincere; but in goethe the father it was a masque for inveterate dislike. a natural ground of this existed in the original relations between them. under whatever disguise or pretext, the frenchman was in fact a military intruder. he occupied the best suite of rooms in the house, used the furniture as his own; and, though upon private motives he abstained from doing all the injury which his situation authorized, (so as in particular to have spread his fine military maps upon the floor, rather than disfigure the decorated walls by nails,) still he claimed credit, if not services of requital, for all such instances of forbearance. here were grievances enough; but, in addition to these, the comte's official appointments drew upon him a weight of daily business, which kept the house in a continual uproar. farewell to the quiet of a literary amateur, and the orderliness of a german household. finally, the comte was a frenchman. these were too many assaults upon one man's patience. it will be readily understood, therefore, how it happened, that, whilst goethe's gentle minded mother, with her flock of children, continued to be on the best terms with comte thorane, the master of the house kept moodily aloof, and retreated from all intercourse. goethe, in his own memoir, enters into large details upon this subject; and from him we shall borrow the _denouement_ of the tale. a crisis had for some time been lowering over the french affairs in frankfort; things seemed ripening for a battle; and at last it came. flight, siege, bombardment, possibly a storm, all danced before the eyes of the terrified citizens. fortunately, however, the battle took place at the distance of four or five miles from frankfort. monsieur le comte was absent, of course, on the field of battle. his unwilling host thought that on such an occasion he also might go out in quality of spectator; and with this purpose he connected another, worthy of a parson adams. it is his son who tells the story, whose filial duty was not proof against his sense of the ludicrous. the old gentleman's hatred of the french had by this time brought him over to his son's admiration of the prussian hero. not doubting for an instant that victory would follow that standard, he resolved on this day to offer in person his congratulations to the prussian army, whom he already viewed as his liberator from a domestic nuisance. so purposing, he made his way cautiously to the suburbs; from the suburbs, still listening at each advance, he went forward to the country; totally forgetting, as his son insists, that, however completely beaten, the french army must still occupy some situation or other between himself and his german deliverer. coming, however, at length to a heath, he found some of those marauders usually to be met with in the rear of armies, prowling about, and at intervals amusing themselves with shooting at a mark. for want of a better, it seemed not improbable that a large german head might answer their purpose. certain signs admonished him of this, and the old gentleman crept back to frankfort. not many hours after came back also the comte, by no means creeping, however; on the contrary, crowing with all his might for a victory which he averred himself to have won. there had in fact been an affair, but on no very great scale, and with no distinguished results. some prisoners, however, he brought, together with some wounded; and naturally he expected all well disposed persons to make their compliments of congratulation upon this triumph. of this duty poor mrs. goethe and her children cheerfully acquitted themselves that same night; and monsieur le comte was so well pleased with the sound opinions of the little goethes, that he sent them in return a collection of sweetmeats and fruits. all promised to go well; intentions, after all, are not acts; and there certainly is not, nor ever was, any treason in taking a morning's walk. but, as ill luck would have it, just as mr. goethe was passing the comte's door, out came the comte in person, purely by accident, as we are told; but we suspect that the surly old german, either under his morning hopes or his evening disappointments, had talked with more frankness than prudence. "good evening to you, herr goethe," said the comte; "you are come, i see, to pay your tribute of congratulation. somewhat of the latest, to be sure; but no matter." "by no means," replied the german;" by no means; _mit nichten_. heartily i wished, the whole day long, that you and your cursed gang might all go to the devil together. "here was plain speaking, at least. the comte thorane could no longer complain of dissimulation. his first movement was to order an arrest; and the official interpreter of the french army took to himself the whole credit that he did not carry it into effect. goethe takes the trouble to report a dialogue, of length and dulness absolutely incredible, between this interpreter and the comte. no such dialogue, we may be assured, ever took place. goethe may, however, be right in supposing that, amongst a foreign soldiery, irritated by the pointed contrasts between the frankfort treatment of their own wounded, and of their prisoners who happened to be in the same circumstances, and under a military council not held to any rigorous responsibility, his father might have found no very favorable consideration of his case. it is well, therefore, that after some struggle the comte's better nature triumphed. he suffered mrs. goethe's merits to outweigh her husband's delinquency; countermanded the order for arrest, and, during the remainder of their connection, kept at such a distance from his moody host as was equally desirable for both. fortunately that remainder was not very long. comte thorane was soon displaced; and the whole army was soon afterwards withdrawn from frankfort. in his fifteenth year goethe was entangled in some connection with young people of inferior rank, amongst whom was margaret, a young girl about two years older than himself, and the object of his first love. the whole affair, as told by goethe, is somewhat mysterious. what might be the final views of the elder parties it is difficult to say; but goethe assures us that they used his services only in writing an occasional epithalamium, the pecuniary acknowledgment for which was spent jovially in a general banquet. the magistrates, however, interfered, and endeavored to extort a confession from goethe. he, as the son of a respectable family, was to be pardoned; the others to be punished. no confession, however, could be extorted; and for his own part he declares that, beyond the offence of forming a clandestine connection, he had nothing to confess. the affair terminated, as regarded himself, in a severe illness. of the others we hear no more. the next event of importance in goethe's life was his removal to college. his own wishes pointed to goettingen, but his father preferred leipsic. thither accordingly he went, but he carried his obedience no farther. declining the study of jurisprudence, he attached himself to general literature. subsequently he removed to the university of strasburg; but in neither place could it be said that he pursued any regular course of study. his health suffered at times during this period of his life; at first from an affection of the chest, caused by an accident on his first journey to leipsic; the carriage had stuck fast in the muddy roads, and goethe exerted himself too much in assisting to extricate the wheels. a second illness connected with the digestive organs brought him into considerable danger. after his return to frankfort, goethe commenced his career as an author. in 1773, and the following year, he made his maiden essay in _goetz of berlichingen_, a drama, (the translation of which, remarkably enough, was destined to be the literary _coup d'essai_ of sir walter scott,) and in the far-famed _werther_. the first of these was pirated; and in consequence the author found some difficulty in paying for the paper of the genuine edition, which part of the expense, by his contract with the publisher, fell upon himself. the general and early popularity of the second work is well known. yet, except in so far as it might spread his name abroad, it cannot be supposed to have had much influence in attracting that potent patronage which now began to determine the course of his future life. so much we collect from the account which goethe himself has left us of this affair in its earliest stages. "i was sitting alone in my room," says he, "at my father's house in frankfort, when a gentleman entered, whom at first i took for frederick jacobi, but soon discovered by the dubious light to be a stranger. he had a military air; and announcing himself by the name of von knebel, gave me to understand in a short explanation, that being in the prussian service, he had connected himself, during a long residence at berlin and potsdam, with the literati of those places; but that at present he held the appointment from the court of weimar of travelling tutor to the prince constantine. this i heard with pleasure; for many of our friends had brought us the most interesting accounts from weimar, in particular that the duchess amelia, mother of the young grand duke and his brother, summoned to her assistance in educating her sons the most distinguished men in germany; and that the university of jena cooperated powerfully in all her liberal plans. i was aware also that wieland was in high favor; and that the german mercury (a literary journal of eminence) was itself highly creditable to the city of jena, from which it issued. a beautiful and well-conducted theatre had besides, as i knew, been lately established at weimar. this, it was true, had been destroyed; but that event, under common circumstances so likely to be fatal as respected the present, had served only to call forth the general expression of confidence in the young prince as a restorer and upholder of all great interests, and true to his purposes under any calamity." thinking thus, and thus prepossessed in favor of weimar, it was natural that goethe should be eager to see the prince. nothing was easier. it happened that he and his brother constantine were at this moment in frankfort, and von knebel willingly offered to present goethe. no sooner said than done; they repaired to the hotel, where they found the illustrious travellers, with count goertz, the tutor of the elder. upon this occasion an accident, rather than any previous reputation of goethe, was probably the determining occasion which led to his favor with the future sovereign of weimar. a new book lay upon the table; that none of the strangers had read it, goethe inferred from observing that the leaves were as yet uncut. it was a work of moser, (_patriotische phantasien_;) and, being political rather than literary in its topics, it presented to goethe, previously acquainted with its outline, an opportunity for conversing with the prince upon subjects nearest to his heart, and of showing that he was not himself a mere studious recluse. the opportunity was not lost; the prince and his tutor were much interested, and perhaps a little surprised. such subjects have the further advantage, according to goethe's own illustration, that, like the arabian thousand and one nights, as conducted by sultana scheherezade, "never ending, still beginning," they rarely come to any absolute close, but so interweave one into another, as still to leave behind a large arrear of interest in order to pursue the conversation, goethe was invited to meet them soon after at mentz. he kept the appointment punctually; made himself even more agreeable; and finally received a formal invitation to enter the service of this excellent prince, who was now beginning to collect around him all those persons who have since made weimar so distinguished a name in connection with the german literature. with some opposition from his father, who held up the rupture between voltaire and frederick of prussia as a precedent applying to all possible connections of princes and literati, goethe accepted the invitation; and hence forwards, for upwards of fifty-five years, his fortunes were bound up with those of the ducal house of weimar. the noble part which that house played in the great modern drama of german politics is well known, and would have been better known had its power been greater. but the moral value of its sacrifices and its risks is not the less. had greater potentates shown equal firmness, germany would not have been laid at the feet of napoleon. in 1806 the grand duke was aware of the peril which awaited the allies of prussia; but neither his heart nor his conscience would allow of his deserting a friend in whose army he held a principal command. the decisive battle took place in his own territory, and not far from his own palace and city of weimar. personally he was with the prussian army; but his excellent consort stayed in the palace to encourage her subjects, and as far as possible to conciliate the enemy by her presence. the fortune of that great day, the 14th of october, 1806, was decided early; and the awful event was announced by a hot retreat and a murderous pursuit through the streets of the town. in the evening napoleon arrived in person; and now came the trying moment. "the duchess," says an englishman well acquainted with weimar and its court, "placed herself on the top of the staircase to greet him with the formality of a courtly reception. napoleon started when he beheld her, _qui etes vous_? he exclaimed with characteristic abruptness. _je suis la duchesse de weimar. je vous plains_, he retorted fiercely, j'ecraserai votre mari; he then added, 'i shall dine in my apartment,' and rushed by her. the night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the horrid excesses of rapine. in the morning the duchess sent to inquire concerning the health of his majesty the emperor, and to solicit an audience. he, who had now benefited by his dreams, or by his reflections, returned a gracious answer, and invited himself to breakfast with her in her apartment." in the conversation which ensued, napoleon asked her if her husband were mad, upon which she justified the duke by appealing to his own magnanimity, asking in her turn if his majesty would have approved of his deserting the king of prussia at the moment when he was attacked by so potent a monarch as himself. the rest of the conversation was in the same spirit, uniting with a sufficient concession to the circumstances of the moment a dignified vindication of a high-minded policy. napoleon was deeply impressed with respect for her, and loudly expressed it. for her sake, indeed, he even affected to pardon her husband, thus making a merit with her of the necessity which he felt, from other motives, for showing forbearance towards a family so nearly allied to that of st. petersburg. in 1813 the grand duke was found at his post in that great gathering of the nations which took place on the stupendous fields of leipsic, and was complimented by the allied sovereigns as one of the most faithful amongst the faithful to the great cause, yet undecided, of national independence. with respect to goethe, as a councillor so near the duke's person, it may be supposed that his presence was never wanting where it promised to be useful. in the earlier campaigns of the duke, goethe was his companion; but in the final contest with napoleon be was unequal to the fatigues of such a post. in all the functions of peace, however, he continued to be a useful servant to the last, though long released from all official duties. each had indeed most honorably earned the gratitude of the other. goethe had surrendered the flower of his years and the best energies of his mind to the service of his serene master. on the other hand, that master had to him been at once his augustus and his maecenas; such is his own expression. under him he had founded a family, raised an estate, obtained titles and decorations from various courts; and in the very vigor of his life he had been allowed to retire, with all the honors of long service, to the sanctuary of his own study, and to the cultivation of his leisure, as the very highest mode in which he could further the public interest. the life of goethe was so quiet and so uniform after the year 1775, when he may first be said to have entered into active life, by taking service with the duke of weimar, that a biographer will find hardly any event to notice, except two journeys to italy, and one campaign in 1792, until he draws near the close of his long career. it cannot interest an english reader to see the dates of his successive appointments. it is enough to know that they soon raised him to as high a station as was consistent with literary leisure; and that he had from the beginning enjoyed the unlimited confidence of his sovereign. nothing remained, in fact, for the subject to desire which the prince had not previously volunteered. in 1825, they were able to look back upon a course of uninterrupted friendship, maintained through good and evil fortunes, unexampled in their agitation and interest for fifty years. the duke commemorated this remarkable event by a jubilee, and by a medal in honor of goethe. full of years and honor, this eminent man might now begin to think of his departure. however, his serenity continued unbroken nearly for two years more, when his illustrious patron died. that shock was the first which put his fortitude to trial. in 1830 others followed; the duchess, who had won so much admiration from napoleon, died; then followed his own son; and there remained little now to connect his wishes with the earth. the family of his patron he had lived to see flourishing in his descendants to the fourth generation. his own grandchildren were prosperous and happy. his intellectual labors were now accomplished. all that remained to wish for was a gentle dismission. this he found in the spring of 1832. after a six days' illness, which caused him no apparent suffering, on the morning of the 22d of march he breathed away as if into a gentle sleep, surrounded by his daughter-in-law and her children. never was a death more in harmony with the life it closed; both had the same character of deep and absolute serenity. such is the outline of goethe's life, traced through its principal events. but as these events, after all, borrow their interest mainly from the consideration allowed to goethe as an author, and as a model in the german literature,--_that_ being the centre about which all secondary feelings of interest in the man must finally revolve,--it thus becomes a duty to throw a glance over his principal works. dismissing his songs, to which has been ascribed by some critics a very high value for their variety and their lyrical enthusiasm; dismissing also a large body of short miscellaneous poems, suited to the occasional circumstances in which they arose; we may throw the capital works of goethe into two classes, philosophic novels, and dramas. the novels, which we call _philosophic_ by way of expressing their main characteristic in being written to serve a preconceived purpose, or to embody some peculiar views of life, or some aspects of philosophic truth, are three, viz., the _werther's leiden_; secondly, the _wilhelm meister_; and, lastly, the _wahloer-wand-schaften_. the first two exist in english translations; and though the _werther_ had the disadvantage of coming to us through a french version, already, perhaps, somewhat colored and distorted to meet the parisian standards of sentiment, yet, as respects goethe and his reputation amongst us, this wrong has been redressed, or compensated at least, by the good fortune of his _wilhelm meister_, in falling into the hands of a translator whose original genius qualified him for sympathizing even to excess with any real merits in that work. this novel is in its own nature and purpose sufficiently obscure; and the commentaries which have been written upon it by the hurnboldts, schlegels, &c., make the enigma still more enigmatical. we shall not venture abroad upon an ocean of discussion so truly dark, and at the same time so illimitable. whether it be qualified to excite any deep and _sincere_ feeling of one kind or another in the german mind,--in a mind trained under german discipline,--this we will consent to waive as a question not immediately interesting to ourselves. enough that it has not gained, and will not gain, any attention in this country; and this not only because it is thoroughly deficient in all points of attraction to readers formed upon our english literature, but because in some capital circumstances it is absolutely repulsive. we do not wish to offend the admirers of goethe; but the simplicity of truth will not allow us to conceal, that in various points of description or illustration, and sometimes in the very outline of the story, the _wilhelm meister_ is at open war, not with decorum and good taste merely, but with moral purity and the dignity of human nature. as a novelist, goethe and his reputation are problems, and likely to continue such, to the countrymen of mrs. inchbald, miss harriet lee, miss edgeworth, and sir walter scott. to the dramatic works of goethe we are disposed to pay more homage; but neither in the absolute amount of our homage at all professing to approach his public admirers, nor to distribute the proportions of this homage amongst his several performances according to the graduations of _their_ scale. the _iphigenie_ is built upon the old subject of iphigenia in tauris, as treated by euripides and other grecian dramatists; and, if we are to believe a schlegel, it is in beauty and effect a mere echo or reverberation from the finest strains of the old grecian music. that it is somewhat nearer to the greek model than a play after the fashion of racine, we grant. setting aside such faithful transcripts from the antique as the samson agonistes, we might consent to view goethe as that one amongst the moderns who had made the closest approximation to the greek stage. _proximus_, we might say, with quintilian, but with him we must add," _sed lango intervallo_; "and if in the second rank, yet nearer to the third than to the first. two other dramas, the _clavigo_ and the _egmont_, fall below the _iphigenie_ by the very character of their pretensions; the first as too openly renouncing the grandeurs of the ideal; the second as confessedly violating the historic truth of character, without temptation to do so, and without any consequent indemnification. the _tasso_ has been supposed to realize an italian beauty of genial warmth and of sunny repose; but from the common defect of german criticism--the absence of all sufficient illustrations--it is as difficult to understand the true nature and constituents of the supposed italian standard set up for the regulation of our judgments, as it is to measure the degree of approach made to that standard in this particular work. _eugenie_ is celebrated for the artificial burnish of the style, but otherwise has been little relished. it has the beauty of marble sculpture, say the critics of goethe, but also the coldness. we are not often disposed to quarrel with these critics as _below_ the truth in their praises; in this instance we are. the _eugenie_ is a fragment, or (as goethe himself called it in conversation) a _torso_, being only the first drama in a trilogy or series of three dramas, each having a separate plot, whilst all are parts of a more general and comprehensive plan. it may be charged with languor in the movement of the action, and with excess of illustration. thus, _e. g_. the grief of the prince for the supposed death of his daughter, is the monotonous topic which occupies one entire act. but the situations, though not those of _scenical_ distress, are so far from being unexciting, that, on the contrary, they are too powerfully afflicting. the lustre of all these performances, however, is eclipsed by the unrivalled celebrity amongst german critics of the _faust_. upon this it is better to say nothing than too little. how trifling an advance has been made towards clearing the ground for any sane criticism, may be understood from this fact, that as yet no two people have agreed about the meaning of any separate scene, or about the drift of the whole. neither is this explained by saying, that until lately the _faust_ was a fragment; for no additional light has dawned upon the main question since the publication of the latter part. one work there is of goethe's which falls into neither of the classes here noticed; we mean the _hermann and dorothea_, a narrative poem, in hexameter verse. this appears to have given more pleasure to readers not critical, than any other work of its author; and it is remarkable that it traverses humbler ground, as respects both its subject, its characters, and its scenery. from this, and other indications of the same kind, we are disposed to infer that goethe mistook his destination; that his aspiring nature misled him; and that his success would have been greater had he confined himself to the _real_ in domestic life, without raising his eyes to the _ideal_. we must also mention, that goethe threw out some novel speculations in physical science, and particularly in physiology, in the doctrine of colors, and in comparative anatomy, which have divided the opinions of critics even more than any of those questions which have arisen upon points more directly connected with his avowed character of poet. it now remains to say a few words by way of summing up his pretensions as a man, and his intellectual power in the age to which he belonged. his rank and value as a moral being are so plain as to be legible to him who runs. everybody must feel that his temperament and constitutional tendency was of that happy quality, the animal so nicely balanced with the intellectual, that with any ordinary measure of prosperity he could not be otherwise than a good man. he speaks himself of his own "virtue," _sans phrase_; and we tax him with no vanity in doing so. as a young man even at the universities, which at that time were barbarously sensual in germany, he was (for so much we collect from his own memoirs) eminently capable of self-restraint. he preserves a tone of gravity, of sincerity, of respect for female dignity, which we never find associated with the levity and recklessness of vice. we feel throughout, the presence of one who, in respecting others, respects himself; and the cheerfulness of the presiding tone persuades us at once that the narrator is in a healthy moral condition, fears no ill, and is conscious of having meditated none. yet at the same time we cannot disguise from ourselves, that the moral temperament of goethe was one which demanded prosperity. had he been called to face great afflictions, singular temptations, or a billowy and agitated course of life, our belief is that his nature would have been found unequal to the strife; he would have repeated the mixed and moody character of his father. sunny prosperity was essential to his nature; his virtues were adapted to that condition. and happily that was his fate. he had no personal misfortunes; his path was joyous in this life; and even the reflex sorrow from the calamities of his friends did not press too heavily on his sympathies; none of these were in excess either as to degree or duration. in this estimate of goethe as a moral being, few people will differ with us, unless it were the religious bigot. and to him we must concede thus much, that goethe was not that religious creature which by nature he was intended to become. this is to be regretted. goethe was naturally pious, and reverential towards higher natures; and it was in the mere levity or wantonness of youthful power, partly also through that early false bias growing out of the lisbon earthquake, that he falsified his original destination. do we mean, then, that a childish error could permanently master his understanding? not so; _that_ would have been corrected with his growing strength. but having once arisen, it must for a long time have moulded his feelings; _until_ corrected, it must have impressed a corresponding false bias upon his practical way of viewing things; and that sort of false bias, once established, might long survive a mere error of the understanding. one thing is undeniable,--goethe had so far corrupted and clouded his natural mind, that he did not look up to god, or the system of things beyond the grave, with the interest of reverence and awe, but with the interest of curiosity. goethe, however, in a moral estimate, will be viewed pretty uniformly. but goethe intellectually, goethe as a power acting upon the age in which he lived, that is another question. let us put a case; suppose that goethe's death had occurred fifty years ago, that is, in the year 1785, what would have been the general impression? would europe have felt a shock? would europe have been sensible even of the event? not at all; it would have been obscurely noticed in the newspapers of germany, as the death of a novelist who had produced some effect about ten years before. in 1832, it was announced by the post-horns of all europe as the death of him who had written the _wilhelm meister_, the _iphigenie_, and the _faust_, and who had been enthroned by some of his admirers on the same seat with homer and shakspeare, as composing what they termed the _trinity of men of genius_. and yet it is a fact, that, in the opinion of some amongst the acknowledged leaders of our own literature for the last twenty-five years, the _werther_ was superior to all which followed it, and for mere power was the paramount work of goethe. for ourselves, we must acknowledge our assent upon the whole to this verdict; and at the same time we will avow our belief that the reputation of goethe must decline for the next generation or two, until it reaches its just level. three causes, we are persuaded, have concurred to push it so far beyond the proportion of real and genuine interest attached to his works, for in germany his works are little read, and in this country not at all. _first_, his extraordinary age; for the last twenty years goethe had been the patriarch of the german literature. _secondly_, the splendor of his official rank at the court of weimar; he was the minister and private friend of the patriot sovereign amongst the princes of germany. _thirdly_, the quantity of enigmatical and unintelligible writing which he has designedly thrown into his latter works, by way of keeping up a system of discussion and strife upon his own meaning amongst the critics of his country. these disputes, had his meaning been of any value in his own eyes, he would naturally have settled by a few authoritative words from himself; but it was his policy to keep alive the feud in a case where it was of importance, that his name should continue to agitate the world, but of none at all that he should be rightly interpreted. schiller. john christopher frederick von schiller, was born at marbach, a small town in the duchy of wurtemberg, on the 10th day of november, 1759. it will aid the reader in synchronizing the periods of this great man's life with the corresponding events throughout christendom, if we direct his attention to the fact, that schiller's birth nearly coincided in point of time with that of robert burns, and that it preceded that of napoleon by about ten years. the position of schiller is remarkable. in the land of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he is ranked as the second name in german literature; everywhere else he is ranked as the first. for us, who are aliens to germany, schiller is the representative of the german intellect in its highest form; and to him, at all events, whether first or second, it is certainly due, that the german intellect has become a known power, and a power of growing magnitude, for the great commonwealth of christendom. luther and kepler, potent intellects as they were, did not make themselves known as germans. the revolutionary vigor of the one, the starry lustre of the other, blended with the convulsions of reformation, or with the aurora of ascending science, in too kindly and genial a tone to call off the attention from the work which they performed, from the service which they promoted, to the circumstances of their personal position. their country, their birth, their abode, even their separate existence, was merged in the mighty cause to which they lent their cooperation. and thus at the beginning of the sixteenth century, thus at the beginning of the seventeenth, did the titan sons of germany defeat their own private pretensions by the very grandeur of their merits. their interest as patriots was lost and confounded in their paramount interest as cosmopolites. what they did for man and for human dignity eclipsed what they had designed for germany. after them there was a long interlunar period of darkness for the land of the rhine and the danube. the german energy, too spasmodically excited, suffered a collapse. throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, but one vigorous mind arose for permanent effects in literature. this was opitz, a poet who deserves even yet to be read with attention, but who is no more worthy to be classed as the dryden, whom his too partial countrymen have styled him, than the germany of the thirty years' war of taking rank by the side of civilized and cultured england during the cromwellian era, or klopstock of sitting on the same throne with milton. leibnitz was the one sole potentate in the fields of intellect whom the germany of this country produced; and he, like luther and kepler, impresses us rather as a european than as a german mind, partly perhaps from his having pursued his self-development in foreign lands, partly from his large circle of foreign connections, but most of all from his having written chiefly in french or in latin. passing onwards to the eighteenth century, we find, through its earlier half, an absolute wilderness, unreclaimed and without promise of natural vegetation, as the barren arena on which the few insipid writers of germany paraded. the torpor of academic dulness domineered over the length and breadth of the land. and as these academic bodies were universally found harnessed in the equipage of petty courts, it followed that the lethargies of pedantic dulness were uniformly deepened by the lethargies of aulic and ceremonial dulness; so that, if the reader represents to himself the very abstract of birthday odes, sycophantish dedications, and court sermons, he will have some adequate idea of the sterility and the mechanical formality which at that era spread the sleep of death over german literature. literature, the very word literature, points the laughter of scorn to what passed under that name during the period of gottsched. that such a man indeed as this gottsched, equal at the best to the composition of a latin grammar or a school arithmetic, should for a moment have presided over the german muses, stands out as in itself a brief and significant memorial, too certain for contradiction, and yet almost too gross for belief, of the apoplectic sleep under which the mind of central europe at that era lay oppressed. the rust of disuse had corroded the very principles of activity. and, as if the double night of academic dulness, combined with the dulness of court inanities, had not been sufficient for the stifling of all native energies, the feebleness of french models (and of these moreover naturalized through still feebler imitations) had become the law and standard for all attempts at original composition. the darkness of night, it is usually said, grows deeper as it approaches the dawn; and the very enormity of that prostration under which the german intellect at this time groaned, was the most certain pledge to any observing eye of that intense reaction soon to stir and kindle among the smouldering activities of this spell-bound people. this re-action, however, was not abrupt and theatrical. it moved through slow stages and by equable gradations. it might be said to commence from the middle of the eighteenth century, that is, about nine years before the birth of schiller; but a progress of forty years had not carried it so far towards its meridian altitude, as that the sympathetic shock from the french revolution was by one fraction more rude and shattering than the public torpor still demanded. there is a memorable correspondency throughout all members of protestant christendom in whatsoever relates to literature and intellectual advance. however imperfect the organization which binds them together, it was sufficient even in these elder times to transmit reciprocally from one to every other, so much of that illumination which could be gathered into books, that no christian state could be much in advance of another, supposing that popery opposed no barriers to free communication, unless only in those points which depended upon local gifts of nature, upon the genius of a particular people, or upon the excellence of its institutions. these advantages were incommunicable, let the freedom of intercourse have been what it might. england could not send off by posts or by heralds her iron and coals; she could not send the indomitable energy of her population; she could not send the absolute security of property; she could not send the good faith of her parliaments. these were gifts indigenous to herself, either through the temperament of her people, or through the original endowments of her soil. but her condition of moral sentiment, her high-toned civic elevation, her atmosphere of political feeling and popular boldness; much of these she could and did transmit, by the radiation of the press, to the very extremities of the german empire. not only were our books translated, but it is notorious to those acquainted with german novels, or other pictures of german society, that as early as the seven years' war, (1756-1763,) in fact, from the very era when cave and dr. johnson first made the parliamentary debates accessible to the english themselves, most of the german journals repeated, and sent forward as by telegraph, these senatorial displays to every village throughout germany. from the polar latitudes to the mediterranean, from the mouths of the rhine to the euxine, there was no other exhibition of free deliberative eloquence in any popular assembly. and the _luise_ of voss alone, a metrical idyl not less valued for its truth of portraiture than our own vicar of wakefield, will show, that the most sequestered clergyman of a rural parish did not think his breakfast equipage complete without the latest report from the great senate that sat in london. hence we need not be astonished that german and english literature were found by the french revolution in pretty nearly the same condition of semi-vigilance and imperfect animation. that mighty event reached us both, reached us all, we may say, (speaking of protestant states,) at the same moment, by the same tremendous galvanism. the snake, the intellectual snake, that lay in ambush among all nations, roused itself, sloughed itself, renewed its youth, in all of them at the same period. a new world opened upon us all; new revolutions of thought arose; new and nobler activities were born; "and other palms were won." but by and through schiller it was, as its main organ, that this great revolutionary impulse expressed itself. already, as we have said, not less than forty years before the earthquake by which france exploded and projected the scoria of her huge crater over all christian lands, a stirring had commenced among the dry bones of intellectual germany; and symptoms arose that the breath of life would soon disturb, by nobler agitations than by petty personal quarrels, the deathlike repose even of the german universities. precisely in those bodies, however, it was, in those as connected with tyrannical governments, each academic body being shackled to its own petty centre of local despotism, that the old spells remained unlinked; and to them, equally remarkable as firm trustees of truth, and as obstinate depositories of darkness or of superannuated prejudice, we must ascribe the slowness of the german movement on the path of reascent. meantime the earliest torch-bearer to the murky literature of this great land, this crystallization of political states, was bodmer. this man had no demoniac genius, such as the service required; but he had some taste, and, what was better, he had some sensibility. he lived among the alps; and his reading lay among the alpine sublimities of milton and shakspeare. through his very eyes he imbibed a daily scorn of gottsched and his monstrous compound of german coarseness with french sensual levity. he could not look at his native alps, but he saw in them, and their austere grandeurs or their dread realities, a spiritual reproach to the hollowness and falsehood of that dull imposture which gottsched offered by way of substitute for nature. he was taught by the alps to crave for something nobler and deeper. bodmer, though far below such a function, rose by favor of circumstances into an apostle or missionary of truth for germany. he translated passages of english literature. he inoculated with his own sympathies the more fervent mind of the youthful klopstock, who visited him in switzerland. and it soon became evident that germany was not dead, but sleeping; and once again, legibly for any eye, the pulses of life began to play freely through the vast organization of central europe. klopstock, however, though a fervid, a religious, and for that reason an anti-gallican mind, was himself an abortion. such at least is our own opinion of this poet. he was the child and creature of enthusiasm, but of enthusiasm not allied with a masculine intellect, or any organ for that capacious vision and meditative range which his subjects demanded. he vas essentially thoughtless, betrays everywhere a most effeminate quality of sensibility, and is the sport of that pseudo-enthusiasm and baseless rapture which we see so often allied with the excitement of strong liquors. in taste, or the sense of proportions and congruencies, or the harmonious adaptations, he is perhaps the most defective writer extant. but if no patriarch of german literature, in the sense of having shaped the moulds in which it was to flow, in the sense of having disciplined its taste or excited its rivalship by classical models of excellence, or raised a finished standard of style, perhaps we must concede that, on a minor scale, klopstock did something of that service in every one of these departments. his works were at least miltonic in their choice of subjects, if ludicrously non-miltonic in their treatment of those subjects. and, whether due to him or not, it is undeniable that in his time the mother-tongue of germany revived from the most absolute degradation on record, to its ancient purity. in the time of gottsched, the authors of germany wrote a macaronic jargon, in which french and latin made up a considerable proportion of every sentence: nay, it happened often that foreign words were inflected with german forms; and the whole result was such as to remind the reader of the medical examination in the _malade imaginaire_ of moliere, "quid poetea est a faire? saignare baignare ensuita purgare," &c. now is it reasonable to ascribe some share in the restoration of good to klopstock, both because his own writings exhibit nothing of this most abject euphuism, (a euphuism expressing itself not in fantastic refinements on the staple of the language, but altogether in rejecting it for foreign words and idioms,) and because he wrote expressly on the subject of style and composition? wieland, meantime, if not enjoying so intense an acceptation as klopstock, had a more extensive one; and it is in vain to deny him the praise of a festive, brilliant, and most versatile wit. the schlegels showed the haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures, in depreciating wieland, at a time when old age had laid a freezing hand upon the energy which he would once have put forth in defending himself. he was the voltaire of germany, and very much more than the voltaire; for his romantic and legendary poems are above the level of voltaire. but, on the other hand, he was a voltaire in sensual impurity. to work, to carry on a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous impressions,--these were the unworthy aims of wieland; and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature years. an old man corrupting his readers, attempting to corrupt them, or relying for his effect upon corruptions already effected, in the purity of their affections, is a hideous object; and that must be a precarious influence indeed which depends for its durability upon the licentiousness of men. wieland, therefore, except in parts, will not last as a national idol; but such he was nevertheless for a time. burger wrote too little of any expansive compass to give the measure of his powers, or to found national impression; lichtenberg, though a very sagacious observer, never rose into what can be called a power, he did not modify his age; yet these were both men of extraordinary talent, and burger a man of undoubted genius. on the other hand, lessing was merely a man of talent, but of talent in the highest degree adapted to popularity. his very defects, and the shallowness of his philosophy, promoted his popularity; and by comparison with the french critics on the dramatic or scenical proprieties he is ever profound. his plummet, if not suited to the soundless depths of shakspeare, was able ten times over to fathom the little rivulets of parisian philosophy. this he did effectually, and thus unconsciously levelled the paths for shakspeare, and for that supreme dominion which he has since held over the german stage, by crushing with his sarcastic shrewdness the pretensions of all who stood in the way. at that time, and even yet, the functions of a literary man were very important in germany; the popular mind and the popular instinct pointed one way, those of the little courts another. multitudes of little german states (many of which were absorbed since 1816 by the process of _mediatizing_) made it their ambition to play at keeping mimic armies in their pay, and to ape the greater military sovereigns, by encouraging french literature only, and the french language at their courts. it was this latter propensity which had generated the anomalous macaronic dialect, of which we have already spoken as a characteristic circumstance in the social features of literary germany during the first half of the eighteenth century. nowhere else, within the records of human follies, do we find a corresponding case, in which the government and the patrician orders in the state, taking for granted, and absolutely postulating the utter worthlessness for intellectual aims of those in and by whom they maintained their own grandeur and independence, undisguisedly and even professedly sought to ally themselves with a foreign literature, foreign literati, and a foreign language. in this unexampled display of scorn for native resources, and the consequent collision between the two principles of action, all depended upon the people themselves. for a time the wicked and most profligate contempt of the local governments for that native merit which it was their duty to evoke and to cherish, naturally enough produced its own justification. like jews or slaves, whom all the world have agreed to hold contemptible, the german literati found it hard to make head against so obstinate a prejudgment; and too often they became all that they were presumed to be. _sint maecenates, non deerunt, flacce, marones._ and the converse too often holds good--that when all who should have smiled scowl upon a man, he turns out the abject thing they have predicted. where frenchified fredericks sit upon german thrones, it should not surprise us to see a crop of gottscheds arise as the best fruitage of the land. but when there is any latent nobility in the popular mind, such scorn, by its very extremity, will call forth its own counteraction. it was perhaps good for germany that a prince so eminent in one aspect as _fritz der einziger,_[footnote: _" freddy the unique;"_ which is the name by which the prussians expressed their admiration of the martial and indomitable, though somewhat fantastic, king.] should put on record so emphatically his intense conviction, that no good thing could arise out of germany. this creed was expressed by the quality of the french minds which he attracted to his court. the very refuse and dregs of the parisian coteries satisfied his hunger for french garbage; the very offal of their shambles met the demand of his palate; even a maupertuis, so long as he could produce a french baptismal certificate, was good enough to manufacture into the president of a berlin academy. such scorn challenged a reaction: the contest lay between the thrones of germany and the popular intellect, and the final result was inevitable. once aware that they were insulted, once enlightened to the full consciousness of the scorn which trampled on them as intellectual and predestined helots, even the mild-tempered germans became fierce, and now began to aspire, not merely under the ordinary instincts of personal ambition, but with a vindictive feeling, and as conscious agents of retribution. it became a pleasure with the german author, that the very same works which elevated himself, wreaked his nation upon their princes, and poured retorted scorn upon their most ungenerous and unparental sovereigns. already, in the reign of the martial frederick, the men who put most weight of authority into his contempt of germans, --euler, the matchless euler, lambert, and immanuel kant,--had vindicated the preeminence of german mathematics. already, in 1755, had the same immanuel kant, whilst yet a probationer for the chair of logic in a prussian university, sketched the outline of that philosophy which has secured the admiration, though not the assent of all men known and proved to have understood it, of all men able to state its doctrines in terms admissible by its disciples. already, and even previously, had haller, who wrote in german, placed himself at the head of the current physiology. and in the fields of science or of philosophy, the victory was already decided for the german intellect in competition with the french. but the fields of literature were still comparatively barren. klopstock was at least an anomaly; lessing did not present himself in the impassioned walks of literature; herder was viewed too much in the exclusive and professional light of a clergyman; and, with the exception of john paul bichter, a man of most original genius, but quite unfitted for general popularity, no commanding mind arose in germany with powers for levying homage from foreign nations, until the appearance, as a great scenical poet, of frederick schiller. the father of this great poet was caspar schiller, an officer in the military service of the duke of wurtemberg. he had previously served as a surgeon in the bavarian army; but on his final return to his native country of wurtemberg, and to the service of his native prince, he laid aside his medical character for ever, and obtained a commission as ensign and adjutant. in 1763, the peace of paris threw him out of his military employment, with the nominal rank of captain. but, having conciliated the duke's favor, he was still borne on the books of the ducal establishment; and, as a planner of ornamental gardens, or in some other civil capacity, he continued to serve his serene highness for the rest of his life. the parents of schiller were both pious, upright persons, with that loyal fidelity to duty, and that humble simplicity of demeanor towards their superiors, which is so often found among the unpretending natives of germany. it is probable, however, that schiller owed to his mother exclusively the preternatural endowments of his intellect. she was of humble origin, the daughter of a baker, and not so fortunate as to have received much education. but she was apparently rich in gifts of the heart and the understanding. she read poetry with delight; and through the profound filial love with which she had inspired her son, she found it easy to communicate her own literary tastes. her husband was not illiterate, and had in mature life so laudably applied himself to the improvement of his own defective knowledge, that at length he thought himself capable of appearing before the public as an author. his book related simply to the subjects of his professional experience as a horticulturist, and was entitled _die baumzurht im grossen_(on the management of forests.) some merit we must suppose it to have had, since the public called for a second edition of it long after his own death, and even after that of his illustrious son. and although he was a plain man, of no pretensions, and possibly even of slow faculties, he has left behind him a prayer, in which there is one petition of sublime and pathetic piety, worthy to be remembered by the side of agar's wise prayer against the almost equal temptations of poverty and riches. at the birth of his son, he had been reflecting with sorrowful anxiety, not unmingled with self-reproach, on his own many disqualifications for conducting the education of the child. but at length, reading in his own manifold imperfections but so many reiterations of the necessity that he should rely upon god's bounty, converting his very defects into so many arguments of hope and confidence in heaven, he prayed thus: "oh god, that knowest my poverty in good gifts for my son's inheritance, graciously permit that, even as the want of bread became to thy son's hunger-stricken flock in the wilderness the pledge of overflowing abundance, so likewise my darkness may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the measure of thy unfathomable light; and because i, thy worm, cannot give to my son the least of blessings, do thou give the greatest; because in my hands there is not any thing, do thou from thine pour out all things; and that temple of a new-born spirit, which i cannot adorn even with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, do thou irradiate with the celestial adornment of thy presence, and finally with that peace that passeth all understanding." reared at the feet of parents so pious and affectionate, schiller would doubtless pass a happy childhood; and probably to this utter tranquillity of his earlier years, to his seclusion from all that could create pain, or even anxiety, we must ascribe the unusual dearth of anecdotes from this period of his life; a dearth which has tempted some of his biographers into improving and embellishing some puerile stories, which a man of sense will inevitably reject as too trivial for his gravity or too fantastical for his faith. that nation is happy, according to a common adage, which furnishes little business to the historian; for such a vacuity in facts argues a condition of perfect peace and silent prosperity. that childhood is happy, or may generally be presumed such, which has furnished few records of external experience, little that has appeared in doing or in suffering to the eyes of companions; for the child who has been made happy by early thoughtfulness, and by infantine struggles with the great ideas of his origin and his destination, (ideas which settle with a deep, dove-like brooding upon the mind of childhood, more than of mature life, vexed with inroads from the noisy world,) will not manifest the workings of his spirit by much of external activity. the _fallentis semita vitae_, that path of noiseless life, which eludes and deceives the conscious notice both of its subject and of all around him, opens equally to the man and to the child; and the happiest of all childhoods will have been that of which the happiness has survived and expressed itself, not in distinct records, but in deep affection, in abiding love, and the hauntings of meditative power. such a childhood, in the bosom of maternal tenderness, was probably passed by schiller; and his first awaking to the world of strife and perplexity happened in his fourteenth year. up to that period his life had been vagrant, agreeably to the shifting necessities of the ducal service, and his education desultory and domestic. but in the year 1773 he was solemnly entered as a member of a new academical institution, founded by the reigning duke, and recently translated to his little capital of stuttgard. this change took place at the special request of the duke, who, under the mask of patronage, took upon himself the severe control of the whole simple family. the parents were probably both too humble and dutiful in spirit towards one whom they regarded in the double light of sovereign lord and of personal benefactor, ever to murmur at the ducal behests, far less to resist them. the duke was for them an earthly providence; and they resigned themselves, together with their child, to the disposal of him who dispensed their earthly blessings, not less meekly than of him whose vicegerent they presumed him to be. in such a frame of mind, requests are but another name for commands; and thus it happened that a second change arose upon the first, even more determinately fatal to the young schiller's happiness. hitherto he had cherished a day-dream pointing to the pastoral office in some rural district, as that which would harmonize best with his intellectual purposes, with his love of quiet, and by means of its preparatory requirements, best also with his own peculiar choice of studies. but this scheme he now found himself compelled to sacrifice; and the two evils which fell upon him concurrently in his new situation were, first, the formal military discipline and monotonous routine of duty; secondly, the uncongenial direction of the studies, which were shaped entirely to the attainment of legal knowledge, and the narrow service of the local tribunals. so illiberal and so exclusive a system of education was revolting to the expansive mind of schiller; and the military bondage under which this system was enforced, shocked the aspiring nobility of his moral nature, not less than the technical narrowness of the studies shocked his understanding. in point of expense the whole establishment cost nothing at all to those parents who were privileged servants of the duke: in this number were the parents of schiller, and that single consideration weighed too powerfully upon his filial piety to allow of his openly murmuring at his lot; while on _their_ part the parents were equally shy of encouraging a disgust which too obviously tended to defeat the promises of ducal favor. this system of monotonous confinement was therefore carried to its completion, and the murmurs of the young schiller were either dutifully suppressed, or found vent only in secret letters to a friend. in one point only schiller was able to improve his condition; jointly with the juristic department, was another for training young aspirants to the medical profession. to this, as promising a more enlarged scheme of study, schiller by permission transferred himself in 1775. but whatever relief he might find in the nature of his new studies, he found none at all in the system of personal discipline which prevailed. under the oppression of this detested system, and by pure reaction against its wearing persecutions, we learn from schiller himself, that in his nineteenth year he undertook the earliest of his surviving plays, the robbers, beyond doubt the most tempestuous, the most volcanic, we might say, of all juvenile creations anywhere recorded. he himself calls it "a monster," and a monster it is; but a monster which has never failed to convulse the heart of young readers with the temperament of intellectual enthusiasm and sensibility. true it is, and nobody was more aware of that fact than schiller himself in after years, the characters of the three moors, father and sons, are mere impossibilities; and some readers, in whom the judicious acquaintance with human life in its realities has outrun the sensibilities, are so much shocked by these hypernatural phenomena, that they are incapable of enjoying the terrific sublimities which on that basis of the visionary do really exist. a poet, perhaps schiller might have alleged, is entitled to assume hypothetically so much in the previous positions or circumstances of his agents as is requisite to the basis from which he starts. it is undeniable that shakspeare and others have availed themselves of this principle, and with memorable success. shakspeare, for instance, _postulates_ his witches, his caliban, his ariel: grant, he virtually says, such modes of spiritual existence or of spiritual relations as a possibility; do not expect me to demonstrate this, and upon that single concession i will rear a superstructure that shall be self-consistent; every thing shall be _internally_ coherent and reconciled, whatever be its _external_ relations as to our human experience. but this species of assumption, on the largest scale, is more within the limits of credibility and plausible verisimilitude when applied to modes of existence, which, after all, are in such total darkness to us, (the limits of the possible being so undefined and shadowy as to what can or cannot exist,) than the very slightest liberties taken with human character, or with those principles of action, motives, and feelings, upon which men would move under given circumstances, or with the modes of action which in common prudence they would be likely to adopt. the truth is, that, as a coherent work of art, the robbers is indefensible; but, however monstrous it may be pronounced, it possesses a power to agitate and convulse, which will always obliterate its great faults to the young, and to all whose judgment is not too much developed. and the best apology for schiller is found in his own words, in recording the circumstances and causes under which this anomalous production arose. "to escape," says he, "from the formalities of a discipline which was odious to my heart, i sought a retreat in the world of ideas and shadowy possibilities, while as yet i knew nothing at all of that human world from which i was harshly secluded by iron bars. of men, the actual men in this world below, i knew absolutely nothing at the time when i composed my robbers. four hundred human beings, it is true, were my fellow-prisoners in this abode; but they were mere tautologies and reiterations of the self-same mechanic creature, and like so many plaster casts from the same original statue. thus situated, of necessity i failed. in making the attempt, my chisel brought out a monster, of which [and that was fortunate] the world had no type or resemblance to show." meantime this demoniac drama produced very opposite results to schiller's reputation. among the young men of germany it was received with an enthusiasm absolutely unparalleled, though it is perfectly untrue that it excited some persons of rank and splendid expectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate charles moor in becoming robbers. on the other hand, the play was of too powerful a cast not in any case to have alarmed his serenity the duke of wurtemberg; for it argued a most revolutionary mind, and the utmost audacity of self-will. but besides this general ground of censure, there arose a special one, in a quarter so remote, that this one fact may serve to evidence the extent as well as intensity of the impression made. the territory of the grisons had been called by spiegelberg, one of the robbers, "the thief's athens." upon this the magistrates of that country presented a complaint to the duke; and his highness having cited schiller to his presence, and severely reprimanded him, issued a decree that this dangerous young student should henceforth confine himself to his medical studies. the persecution which followed exhibits such extraordinary exertions of despotism, even for that land of irresponsible power, that we must presume the duke to have relied more upon the hold which he had upon schiller through his affection for parents so absolutely dependent on his highness's power, than upon any laws, good or bad, which he could have pleaded as his warrant. germany, however, thought otherwise of the new tragedy than the serene critic of wurtemburg: it was performed with vast applause at the neighboring city of mannheim; and thither, under a most excusable interest in his own play, the young poet clandestinely went. on his return he was placed under arrest. and soon afterwards, being now thoroughly disgusted, and, with some reason, alarmed by the tyranny of the duke, schiller finally eloped to mannheim, availing himself of the confusion created in stuttgard by the visit of a foreign prince. at mannheim he lived in the house of dalberg, a man of some rank and of sounding titles, but in mannheim known chiefly as the literary manager (or what is called director) of the theatre. this connection aided in determining the subsequent direction of schiller's talents; and his fiesco, his intrigue and love, his don carlos, and his maria stuart, followed within a short period of years. none of these are so far free from the faults of the robbers as to merit a separate notice; for with less power, they are almost equally licentious. finally, however, he brought out his wallenstein, an immortal drama, and, beyond all competition, the nearest in point of excellence to the dramas of shakspeare. the position of the characters of max piccolomini and the princess thekla is the finest instance of what, in a critical sense, is called _relief,_ that literature offers. young, innocent, unfortunate, among a camp of ambitious, guilty, and blood-stained men, they offer a depth and solemnity of impression which is equally required by way of contrast and of final repose. from mannheim, where he had a transient love affair with laura dalberg, the daughter of his friend the director, schiller removed to jena, the celebrated university in the territory of weimar. the grand duke of that german florence was at this time gathering around him the most eminent of the german intellects; and he was eager to enroll schiller in the body of his professors. in 1799 schiller received the chair of civil history; and not long after he married miss lengefeld, with whom he had been for some time acquainted. in 1803 he was ennobled; that is, he was raised to the rank of gentleman, and entitled to attach the prefix of _von_ to his name. his income was now sufficient for domestic comfort and respectable independence; while in the society of goethe, herder, and other eminent wits, he found even more relaxation for his intellect, than his intellect, so fervent and so self-sustained, could require. meantime the health of schiller was gradually undermined: his lungs had been long subject to attacks of disease; and the warning indications which constantly arose of some deep-seated organic injuries in his pulmonary system ought to have put him on his guard for some years before his death. of all men, however, it is remarkable that schiller was the most criminally negligent of his health; remarkable, we say, because for a period of four years schiller had applied himself seriously to the study of medicine. the strong coffee, and the wine, which he drank, may not have been so injurious as his biographers suppose; but his habit of sitting up through the night, and defrauding his wasted frame of all natural and restorative sleep, had something in it of that guilt which belongs to suicide. on the 9th of may, 1805, his complaint reached its crisis. early in the morning he became delirious; at noon his delirium abated; and at four in the afternoon he fell into a gentle unagitated sleep, from which he soon awoke. conscious that he now stood on the very edge of the grave, he calmly and fervently took a last farewell of his friends. at six in the evening he fell again into sleep, from which, however, he again awoke once more to utter the memorable declaration, "that many things were growing plain and clear to his understanding." after this the cloud of sleep again settled upon him; a sleep which soon changed into the cloud of death. this event produced a profound impression throughout germany. the theatres were closed at weimar, and the funeral was conducted with public honors. the position in point of time, and the peculiar services of schiller to the german literature, we have already stated: it remains to add, that in person he was tall, and of a strong bony structure, but not muscular, and strikingly lean. his forehead was lofty, his nose aquiline, and his mouth almost of grecian beauty. with other good points about his face, and with auburn hair, it may be presumed that his whole appearance was pleasing and impressive, while in latter years the character of sadness and contemplative sensibility deepened the impression of his countenance. we have said enough of his intellectual merit, which places him in our judgment at the head of the trans-rhenish literature. but we add in concluding, that frederick von schiller was something more than a great author; he was also in an eminent sense a great man; and his works are not more worthy of being studied for their singular force and originality, than his moral character from its nobility and aspiring grandeur. the life and works of friedrich schiller by calvin thomas professor in columbia university to eleanor allen thomas herzelibe frouwe min, got gebe dir hiute und iemer guot! kunde ich bas gedenken din, des haete ich willeclichen muot. preface i have wished to give a trustworthy account of schiller and his works on a scale large enough to permit the doing of something like justice to his great name, but not so large as in itself to kill all hope and chance of readableness. by a trustworthy account i mean one that is accurate in the matters of fact and sane in the matters of judgment. that there is room for an english book thus conceived will be readily granted, i imagine, by all those who know. at any rate schiller is one of those writers of whom a new appreciation, from time to time, will always be in order. i have thought it important that my work, while taking due note of recent german scholarship, should rest throughout on fresh and independent study. accordingly, among all the many books that have aided me more or less, i have had in hand most often, next to the works of schiller, the collection of his letters, as admirably edited by jonas. among the german biographers i owe the most to minor, weltrich and brahm, for the period covered by their several works; for the later years, to wychgram and harnack. earlier biographers, notably hoffmeister and palleske, have also been found helpful here and there. of course i have not flattered myself, in writing of a man whose uneventful career has repeatedly been explored in every nook and cranny, with any hope of adding materially to the tale of mere fact. one who gleans after minor and weltrich and wychgram will find little but chaff, and i have tried to avoid the garnering of chaff. one of my chief perplexities, accordingly, has been to decide what to omit. if there shall be those who look for what they do not find, or find what they did not expect, i can only say that the question of perspective, of the relative importance of things, has all along received my careful attention. thoroughness is very alluring, but life is short and some things must be taken for granted or treated as negligible. otherwise one runs a risk, as german experience proves, of beginning and never finishing. my great concern has been with the works of schiller--to interpret them as the expression of an interesting individuality and an interesting epoch. it is now some twenty years since i first came under the weimarian spell, and during that time my feeling for schiller has undergone vicissitudes not unlike those described by brahm in a passage quoted at the very end of this volume. at no time, indeed, could i truthfully have called myself a "schiller-hater", but there was a time, certainly, when it seemed to me that he was very much overestimated by his countrymen; when my mind was very hospitable to demonstrations of his artistic shortcoming. time has brought a different temper, and this book is the child of what i deem the wiser disposition. for the poet who wins the heart of a great people and holds it for a century is right; there is nothing more to be said, so far as concerns his title to renown. the creative achievement is far more precious and important than any possible criticism of it. this does not mean that in dealing with such a poet the critic is in duty bound to abdicate his lower function and to let his scruples melt away in the warm water of a friendly partisanship; it means only that he will be best occupied, speaking generally, in a conscientious attempt to see the man as he was, to "experience the savor of him", and to understand the national temperament to which he has endeared himself. this, i hope, defines sufficiently the spirit in which i have written. in discussing the plays i have endeavored to deal with them in a large way, laying hold of each where it is most interesting, and not caring to be either systematic or exhaustive. questions of minute and technical scholarship, such as have their proper place in a learned monograph, or in the introduction and notes to an edition of the text, have been avoided on principle. everywhere--even in the difficult thirteenth chapter--my aim has been to disengage and bring clearly into view the essential, distinctive character of schiller's work; and where i have had to fear either that the professional scholar would frown at my sins of omission, or that the mere lover of literature would yawn at my sins of commission, i have boldly accepted the first-named horn of the dilemma. new york, nov. 6, 1901. contents chapter i parentage and schooling captain schiller and his wife--sojourn at lorch--traits of friedrich's childhood--removal to ludwigsburg--karl eugen, duke of württemberg--impressions from court, theater and school--poetic beginnings--duke karl's change of heart--franziska von hohenheim--the academy at solitude--schiller at the academy--school exercises--from law to medicine--early poems and orations--an ardent friend--books read and their effect--dramatic plans--dissertation rejected--genesis of 'the robbers'--morbid melancholy--release from the academy--value of the education received. chapter ii the robbers general characterization--the schubart story--schiller and schubart--the contrasted brothers--comparison with klinger and leisewitz--influence of rousseau and goethe--unlike earlier attacks on the social order--outlawry in the eighteenth century--the noble bandit in literature--karl moor's crazy ambition--his sentimentalism--schiller's sympathy with his hero--character of franz--influence of shakespeare--ethical attitude of franz--a dull villain--character of amalia--the subordinate outlaws--a powerful stage-play--defects and merits. chapter iii the stuttgart medicus schiller's position at stuttgart--personal appearance--convivial pleasures--visits at solitude--revision of 'the robbers' for publication--the two prefaces--reception of 'the robbers'--a stage-version prepared for dalberg--changes in the stage-version--popularity of the play--medicus and poet--the 'anthology' of 1782--character of schiller's youthful verse--various poems considered--the songs to laura--poetic promise of the 'anthology'--journalistic enterprises--schiller as a critic of himself--quarrel with duke karl--the swiss imbroglio--the duke implacable--flight from stuttgart. chapter iv the conspiracy of fiesco at genoa general characterization--the historical fiesco--influence of rousseau--the conflicting authorities--fact and fiction in the play--not really a republican tragedy--character of fiesco--of verrina--schiller's vacillation--fiesco's inconsistency--lack of historical lucidity--the changed conclusion--weak and strong points--fiesco and the moor--the female characters--extravagant diction. chapter v the fugitive in hiding reception at mannheim--an elocutionary failure--'fiesco' rejected by dalberg--refuge sought in bauerbach--a new friend--relations with outside world--interest in lotte von wolzogen--literary projects and employments--beginnings of 'don carlos'--friendly overtures from dalberg--work upon 'louise miller'--jealousy and resignation--flutterings of the heart--departure from bauerbach with new play completed. chapter vi cabal and love general characterization--english beginnings of bourgeois tragedy--'miss sara sampson'--development of the tragedy of social conflict--love in the age of sentimentalism--rousseau and the social conflict--wagner and lenz--diderot's 'father of the family'--gemmingen's 'head of the house'--evolution of schiller's plan--debt to predecessors--hints from wagner and lessing and 'siegwart'--weakness of the tragic conclusion--character of louise--her religious sentimentalism--fearsomeness--lack of mother-wit--a cold heroine--character of ferdinand--sentimental extravagance--father and son--prototypes of president von walter. chapter vii theater poet in mannheim mannheim in 1783--dalberg and his theater--the situation on schiller's arrival--letter to frau von wolzogen--contract with dalberg--illness and disappointments--pecuniary troubles--'fiesco' on the stage--triumph of 'cabal and love'--critical notices--discourse on the theater--contract with dalberg not renewed--disappointments and distractions--relations to women--charlotte von kalb--the poems 'resignation' and 'radicalism of passion'--a friendly message from leipzig--project of the _rhenish thalia_--honored by the duke of weimar--unhappiness and longing for friendship--escape from mannheim. chapter viii the boon of friendship gottfried körner and the stock sisters--huber--schiller's arrival in leipzig--a proposal of marriage--sojourn at gohlis--schiller and körner--an enthusiastic letter--körner's helpfulness--with the new friends in dresden--influence of körner--a poetic 'petition'--the 'song to joy'--contributions to the _thalia_--quickened interest in history--letters of julius and raphael--'the ghostseer' begun--unwillingness to leave dresden--a dramatic skit--affair with henriette von arnim--from dresden to weimar. chapter ix don carlos poetic merit of 'don carlos'--its slow genesis--schiller's explanation--st. réal's 'dom carlos'--the original plan--ripening influences--decision in favor of verse--change of attitude toward carlos and philip--influence of körner--completion of the play--character of prince carlos--the marquis of posa--posa and the king--posa's heroics in the last two acts--character of philip--general estimate. chapter x anchored in thuringia weimar in schiller's time--renewal of relations with charlotte von kalb--first meeting with herder and wieland--visit to jena--pleased with weimar--new literary pursuits--visit to meiningen and introduction to the lengefeld family--charlotte von lengefeld--a summer idyl--awakening interest in the greeks--first meeting with goethe--appointed professor at jena--bitterness toward goethe--love, betrothal and marriage--'the gods of greece'--'the artists'--'the ghostseer'--the 'letters on don carlos'--review of 'egmont'--'the misanthrope'--translations from euripides and other minor writings. chapter xi historical writings schiller's merit as a historian--genesis of 'the defection of the netherlands'--the author's self-confidence--his readableness--freedom the animating idea--attitude toward past and present--position as a historian--too little regard for the fact--first lecture at jena--influence of kant--theory of the fall--the 'historical memoirs'--inchoate romanticism--'history of the thirty years' war'--skill in narrating--conception of the war as a struggle for freedom--view of gustav adolf. chapter xii dark days within and without a happy year--disastrous illness in january, 1791--feud with bürger--interest in epic poetry--second illness and desperate plight--help from denmark--resolution to master kant's philosophy--visit to suabia--enterprise of the _horen_--attitude toward the revolution--sympathy for louis xvi.--prediction of napoleon--made a citizen of the french republic--disgust with politics--program of the _horen_--genius and vocation. chapter xiii aesthetic writings value of philosophy to a poet--goethe's opinion--schiller's early philosophizing--the essays on tragedy--plan of 'kallias'--kant's aesthetics--schiller's divergence from kant--beauty identified with freedom-in-the-appearance--explication of the theory--essay on 'winsomeness and dignity'--essay on 'the sublime'--remarks on schiller's general method--letters to the duke of augustenburg--the 'letters on aesthetic education'--some minor papers--essay on 'naïve and sentimental poetry'. chapter xiv the great duumvirate goethe and schiller--six years of aloofness--beginning of intimacy--the 'happy event'--campaign for the conquest of goethe---schiller, on goethe's genius--a friendly relation established--comparison of the duumvirs--fortunes of the _horen_--return to poetry--significance of the essay on 'naive and sentimental poetry'--goethe on schiller's theory--enemies assail the _horen_--the xenia planned in retaliation--a militant league formed--the fusillade of the xenia--effect of the xenia--return to the drama--further relations of goethe and schiller. chapter xv later poems general character of schiller's poetry--'the veiled image at sais'--'the ideal and life'--idealism of goethe and schiller--'the walk'--poems of 1796--'dignity of women'--'the eleusinian festival'--the ballads--attitude toward the present--lyrics of thought--'the maiden's lament'--popularity of schiller's cultural poems--'the song of the bell'--latest poems. chapter xvi wallenstein general characterization--preparatory studies--difficulties of the subject--study of sophocles and aristotle--decision in favor of verse--completion of the play--'wallenstein's camp'--the historical wallenstein--schiller's artistic achievement--character of the hero--his impressiveness--effect of contrast--octavio piccolomini--max piccolomini--max and thekla--lyrical passages--absence of humor and irony. chapter xvii mary stuart genesis of the play--schiller's removal to weimar--'mary stuart' characterized--the fundamental difficulty--unhistorical inventions--effect of these--the meeting of the queens--character of elizabeth--romantic tendencies--mary conceived as a purified sufferer--pathos of the conclusion--ugly portrait of elizabeth accounted for--the historical background--dramatic qualities--character of mortimer. chapter xviii the maid of orleans variety in schiller's work--genesis of 'the maid of orleans'--schiller's johanna--miraculous elements--attitude of the critics--difficulty of the subject--johanna's tragic guilt--her supernatural power--the scene with lionel--schiller's poetic intention--a drama of patriotism--the subordinate characters--excellence of the composition. chapter xix the bride of messina genesis of the play--general characterization--disagreement of the critics--relation to sophocles--substance of the plot--ancients and moderns--fate and responsibility--schiller's invention--unnaturalness of the action--strange conduct of don manuel, beatrice and the mother--lavish use of silence--schiller's contempt of realism--don cesar's expiatory death the real tragedy--use of the fate idea--apologia for the chorus--poetic splendor. chapter xx william tell 'tell' and 'the robbers'--general characterization--genesis--attention to local color--an interruption--success on the stage--the theme of 'tell'--a drama of freedom--the play intensely human--goodness of the exposition--departures from usual method--character of tell--the apple-shooting scene--the scene in the 'hollow way'--tell's long soliloquy--introduction of parricida--bertha and rudenz. chapter xxi the end.--unfinished plays and adaptations a russian theme chosen--berlin negotiations--work on 'demetrius'--'the homage of the arts'--last illness and death--the unfinished 'demetrius'--the historical dmitri--the original plan modified--character of the hero--poetic promise of 'demetrius'--'warbeck'--'the princess of celle'--'the knights of malta'--other unfinished plays--adaptation of 'egmont'--of 'nathan the wise'--of 'macbeth'--of 'turandot'--interest in the french drama--adaptations from the french. chapter xxii the verdict of posterity schiller a national poet--his idealized personality--estimate of dannecker--of madame de staël--goethe's 'epilogue'--controversy over goethe and schiller--attitude of schlegel--of menzel--goethe's loyalty to his friend--the mid-century epoch--unreasonable criticism--interesting prophecy of gervinus--schiller's aesthetic idealism often misunderstood--schiller as a friend of the people--partisan misconceptions--the enthusiasm of 1859--epoch of the philologers--present opinion of schiller--conclusion. live and works of schiller chapter i parentage and schooling nur, vater, mir gesänge. _from the poem 'evening', 1776._ when the austrian war of succession came to an end, in the year 1748, a certain young suabian who had been campaigning in the lowlands as army doctor was left temporarily without employment. the man's name was johann kaspar schiller; he was of good plebeian stock and had lately been a barber's apprentice,--a lot that he had accepted reluctantly when the poverty of a widowed mother compelled him to shift for himself at an early age. having served his time and learned the trade of the barber-surgeon, he had joined a bavarian regiment of hussars. finding himself now suddenly at leisure, after the peace of aix-la-chapelle, he mounted his horse and rode away to the land of his birth to visit his relations. reaching marbach--it was now the spring of 1749--he put up at the 'golden lion', an inn kept by a then prosperous baker named kodweis. here he fell in love with his landlord's daughter dorothea, a girl of sixteen, and in the course of the summer married her. he was at this time about twenty-six years old. he now settled down in marbach to practice his crude art, but the practice came to little and kodweis soon lost his property in foolish speculation. so the quondam soldier fell out of humor with marbach, went into the army again, and when the seven years' war broke out, in 1756, he took the field with a württemberg regiment to fight the king of prussia. he soon reached the grade of lieutenant, in time that of captain; fought and ran with his countrymen, at leuthen, floundered at peril of life in the swamps of breslau and otherwise got his full share of the war's rough-and-tumble. from time to time, as the chance came to him, he visited his young wife in marbach. these were the parents of the poet schiller, who was born november 10, 1759, ten years after goethe, ten years before napoleon. it is worth remembering that he who was to be in his way, another great protestant came into the world on an anniversary of the birth of lather. he was christened johann christoph friedrich. the childhood of little fritz unfolded amid conditions that must have given to life a rather somber aspect. after the close of the war captain schiller moved his little family to lorch, a village some thirty miles east of stuttgart, where he was employed by the duke of württemberg in recruiting soldiers for mercenary service abroad. this hateful business, which was in due time to form a mark for one of the sharp darts of 'cabal and love', seems to have been managed by him with a degree of tact and humanity; for he won the esteem of all with whom he had to do. at home, being of a pious turn and setting great store by the formal exercises of religion, he presided over his household in the manner of an ancient patriarch. between him and his son no very tender relation ever existed, though the poet of later years always revered his father's character. the child's affections clung rather to his mother, whom he grew up to resemble in form and feature and in traits of character. she was a woman of no intellectual pretensions, but worthy of honor for her qualities of heart.[1] of education in the modern sense she had but little. her few extant letters, written mostly in her later years, tell of a simple and lovable character, tenderly devoted to husband and children. tradition credits her with a certain liking for feeble poets of the uz and gellert strain, but this probably did not amount to much. her sphere of interest was the little world of family cares and affections. her early married life had been darkened by manifold sorrows which she bore at first with pious resignation, becoming with the flight of time, however, more and more a borrower of trouble.[2] at lorch her trials were great, for captain schiller received no pay and the family felt the pinch of poverty. here, then, was little room for that merry comradeship, with its _lust zum fabulieren_, which existed between the boy goethe and his playmate mother at frankfurt-on-the-main. in after-time, nevertheless, schiller was wont to look back upon the three years at lorch as the happiest part of his childhood. the village is charmingly situated in the valley of the rems, a tributary of the neckar, and the region round about is historic ground. a short walk southward brings one to the hohenstaufen, on whose summit once stood the ancestral seat of the famous suabian dynasty, and close by lorch is the benedictine monastery in which a number of the hohenstaufen monarchs are buried. here was the romance of history right at hand, but we can hardly suppose that it meant much to the child. the middle ages were not yet in fashion even for adults, and little fritz had other things to think of. with his sister christophine, two years older than himself, he was sent to the village school, where he proved so apt a pupil that his parents became ambitious for him and sent him to the village pastor, a man named moser, to be taught latin. the child looked up to his august teacher and resolved to become himself some day a preacher of the word. not much is known of moser, but to judge from his namesake in 'the robbers', where all passions and qualities are raised to the _n_th power, he must have been a man for whom the reproof of sinners was not only a professional duty but a personal pleasure. the plan of making their fritz a man of god was eagerly embraced by the pious parents and became a settled family aspiration. the boy himself was very susceptible at this time to religious impressions. sister christophine carried with her through life a vivid memory of his appearance at family worship, when the captain would solemnly intone the rimed prayers that he himself had composed for a private ritual. 'it was a touching sight', she says in her recollections[3] of this period, 'to see the reverent expression on the child's winsome face. the pious blue eyes lifted to heaven, the light yellow hair falling about his forehead, and the little hands folded in worship, suggested an angel's head in a picture.' from the same source we learn that fritz was very fond of playing church, with himself in the role of preacher. another reminiscence tells how he one day ran away from school and, having unexpectedly fallen under the paternal eye in his truancy, rushed home to his mother in tearful excitement, got the rod of correction and besought her to give him his punishment before his sterner parent should arrive on the scene. still another, from a somewhat later period, relates how the mother was once walking with her children and told them a bible story so touchingly that they all knelt down and prayed. this is about all that has come down concerning schiller's early childhood. he may have seen the passion-play at gmünd, but this is uncertain. in any case it only added one more to the religious impressions that already dominated his life. toward the end of the year 1766, having exhausted his private resources at lorch, captain schiller applied for relief and was transferred to duty at ludwigsburg, where the family remained under somewhat more tolerable conditions for about nine years. at ludwigsburg he began to interest himself in agriculture and forestry. in 1769 he published certain 'economic contributions', which exhibit him as a sensible, public-spirited man, eagerly bent upon improving the condition of suabian husbandry. in 1775, having become known as an expert in arboriculture, he was placed in charge of the ducal forests and nurseries at castle solitude, and there he spent the remainder of his days in peaceful and congenial activity. he died in 1796. for the impressionable fritz one can hardly imagine a more momentous change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural village to the garish residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince. karl eugen,[4] duke of württemberg, whom men have often called the curse, but the gods haply regard as the good genius, of schiller's youth, came to power in 1744 at the age of sixteen. the three preceding years he had spent at the prussian court, where frederick the second (not yet the great) had taken a deep interest in him and tried to teach him serious views of a ruler's responsibility. but the youth had no stomach for the doctrine that he was in the world for the sake of württemberg. having come to his ducal throne prematurely, through the influence of the king of prussia, he began well, but after a few years shook off the restraints of good advice and entered upon a course of autocratic folly that made württemberg a far-shining example of the evils of absolutism under the old régime. early in his reign he married a beautiful and high-minded princess of bayreuth, but his profligacy soon drove her back to the home of her parents. then a succession of mistresses ruled his affections, while reckless adventurers in high place enjoyed his confidence and fleeced the people at pleasure. to gratify his passion for military display he began to raise unnecessary troops and to hire them out as mercenaries. in 1752 he agreed with the king of france, in consideration of a fixed annual subsidy, to supply six thousand soldiers on demand. the money thus obtained was mostly squandered upon his private vices and extravagances. on the outbreak of the seven years' war the french king demanded the promised troops; and so it came about that the suabian protestants were compelled, in defiance of public sentiment, to make war against their co-religionists of prussia. in the inglorious campaigns which followed, the duke of württemberg cut a rather sorry figure, but criticism only exasperated him. he promised another large body of troops to france, and the men were raised by harsh measures of conscription. the estates of the duchy protested against this autocratic procedure, and, as stuttgart sided with the opposition, the duke determined to punish his unruly capital by removing his court to ludwigsburg, where an ancestor of his, early in the century, had founded a city to match versailles and serve the express purpose of a 'trutz-stuttgart'. the removal of the court to ludwigsburg took place in 1764, three years before the schiller family found a home there. from the first a purely artificial creation, the little city had been going backwards, but it now leaped into short-lived glory as the residence of a prodigal prince who was bent on amusing himself magnificently. the existing ducal palace was enlarged to huge dimensions and lavishly decorated. great parks and gardens were laid out, the market-place was surrounded with arcades, and an opera-house was built, with a stage that could be extended into the open air so as to permit the spectacular evolution of real troops. everything about the place was new and pretentious. the roomy streets and the would-be gorgeous palaces, flaunting their fresh coats of yellow and white stucco, teemed with officers in uniform, with blazing little potentates of the court and with high-born ladies in the puffs and frills of the rococo age. here karl eugen gave himself up to his dream of glory, which was to rival the splendors of versailles. he maintained a costly opera, procuring for it the most famous singers and dancers in europe, and squandered immense sums upon 'venetian nights' and other gorgeous spectacles. for all this barbaric ostentation the people of württemberg were expected to foot the bills. 'fatherland!' said his highness, when a protest was raised on behalf of the country, 'bah! i am the fatherland.' here it was, then, that the young friedrich schiller got his first childish impressions of the great world; of sovereignty exercised that a few might strut in gay plumage while the many toiled to keep them in funds; of state policies determined by wretched court intrigues; of natural rights trampled upon at the caprice of a prince or a prince's favorite. there is no record that the boy was troubled by these things at the time, or looked upon them as anything else than a part of the world's natural order. it is a long way yet to president von walter. the house occupied by captain schiller at ludwigsburg was situated close by the theater, to which the duke's officers had free admission. as a reward of industry little fritz was allowed an occasional evening in front of the 'boards that signify the world'. the performances, to be sure, were french and italian operas, wherein the ballet-master, the machinist and the decorator vied with one another for the production of amazing spectacular effects. people went to stare and gasp--the language was of no importance. it was not exactly dramatic art, but from the boy's point of view it was no doubt magnificent. at any rate it made him at home in the dream-world of the imagination, filled his mind with grandiose pictures and gave him his first rudimentary notions of stage effect. we are not surprised to learn, therefore, that in his home amusements playing theater now took the place of playing church. sister christophine was a faithful helper. a stage could be made of big books, and actors out of paper. when the puppet-show was outgrown, the young dramatist took to framing plays for living performers of his own age,--with a row of chairs for an audience, and himself as manager and protagonist. christophine relates that her brother's fondness for this sort of diversion lasted until he was thirteen years old. in the mean time, however, his chosen career was kept steadily in view. he was sent to the latin school, from which, if his marks should be good, he might hope to advance in about five years to one of the so-called convent schools of württemberg. after this his theological education would proceed for about nine years more at the expense of the state. the ludwigsburg school was a place in which the language of cicero and the religion of luther were thumped into the memory of boys by means of sticks applied to the skin; fritz schiller was a capable scholar, though none of his teachers ever called him, as in the case of the boy lessing at meissen, a horse that needed double fodder. the ordinary ration sufficed him, but he memorized his catechism and his hymns diligently, fussed faithfully over his latin longs and shorts, and took his occasional thrashings with becoming fortitude. on one occasion we hear that he was flogged by mistake and disdained to report the incident at home. religious instruction consisted of mechanical repetition insisted on with brutal severity,--a mode of presenting divine things that must have contrasted painfully, for the sensitive boy, with his mother's simple religion of the heart. when it is added that he was often nagged and punished by a too exacting father, we get a not very sunny picture of our poet's boyhood. it is told,[5] and it may well be true, that he was subject to fits of moodiness, in which he would complain of his lot and brood gloomily over his prospects. nevertheless a schoolmate[6] has left it on record that schiller as a lad was normally high-spirited, a leader in sports as well as in study, and very steadfast in his friendships. while at ludwigsburg he read from the prescribed latin authors, making the acquaintance of ovid, vergil and horace, and in time won praise for his facility in writing latin verses. some of his school exercises have chanced to be preserved. the earliest, dated jan. 1, 1769, is a latin translation in prose of some verses which seem to have been supplied by his teacher for the purpose. the handwriting and the latin tell of faithful juvenile toil and moderate success--nothing more. nor can we extract much biographic interest from the later distichs and _carmina_ which he turned out at school festivals. such things have flowed easily from the pen of many a bright schoolboy whom the bees of hymettus failed to visit. according, to schiller's own testimony[7] his earliest attempt at german verse was made on the occasion of his confirmation, in april, 1772. on the day before the solemn ceremony he was playing about with his comrades in what seemed to his mother an all too worldly frame of mind. she rebuked him for his unseasonable levity, whereat the youngster went into himself, as the germans say, and poured out his supposed feelings in a string of verses so tender and soulful as to draw from his amazed father the exclamation: 'fritz, are you going crazy?' after such a beginning we are not surprised to learn that german poetry made its first strong appeal to him through the pious muse of klopstock. his earliest more ambitious note is heard in a 'hymn to the sun', written in his fourteenth year. it is the note of supernal religious pathos. in rimeless lines of unequal length he celebrates the glory of god in the firmament, soars into celestial space and winds up with a vision of the last great cataclysm. all this is sufficiently klopstockian, as is also the boyish dream of an epic about moses, and of a tragedy to be called 'the christians'. but the time came when our young psalmodist of zion was to be pulled out of his predetermined course and made to sing another song. were the overruling powers malign or benevolent? who shall say, remembering the greek proverb that a man is not educated save by flaying? let us not pause to speculate; but proceed as quickly as may be across the interval that separates these innocent religious effusions from the opening of a great literary career with the cannon-shot of 'the robbers'. about the year 1770 duke karl began to undergo a change of heart. wearying at last of life's vanities and frivolities, the middle-aged sinner took up virtue and philanthropy, as if to show mankind that he too could be a benevolent father to his people. the new departure was due in part to the political success of the estates in curbing his extravagance, but rather more, no doubt, to the personal influence of his mistress, franziska von hohenheim. this lady, whose maiden name was bernerdin, had been given in marriage as a girl of sixteen to a worthless baron von leutrum, who misused her. escaping from him with thoughts of divorce in her mind, she went to visit friends in ludwigsburg. here the inflammable duke fell in love with her, and, after a not very tedious resistance, carried her away to his castle. this was in 1772. her divorce followed soon after, and she remained at court as the duke's favorite mistress. he presently procured for her an imperial title, that of countess hohenheim, and after the death of his duchess, in 1780, he married her. she was not beautiful or talented, but she possessed amiable qualities that made and kept her the object of karl's honest affection. she knew how to humor his whims without crossing his stubborn will, and she chose to exert her influence in promoting humane enterprises and leading her liege lord in the paths of virtuous frugality. on the whole, the people of württemberg, who had suffered much from mistresses of a different ilk, had reason to bless their ruler's fondness for his amiable 'franzele'. she was not unworthy to sit for the portrait of lady milford. an educational project, the founding of a school which later came to be known as the karlschule, marks the beginning of the duke's career in his new rôle. he began very modestly in the year 1770 by gathering a few boys, the sons of officers, at his castle called solitude, and undertaking to provide for their instruction in gardening and forestry. this castle solitude was itself an outcome of the same lordly mood that had led to the removal of the court to ludwigsburg. it was situated on a wooded height some six miles west of stuttgart. here, by means of forced labor and at enormous expense,--and this was only one of many similar building enterprises,--he had cleared a site in the forest and erected a huge palace which, according to the inscription over the door, was to be 'devoted to tranquillity'. but how was a prince to enjoy tranquillity without the necessaries of life? in a short time a score of other buildings, including an opera-house and a barracks, had sprung up about the castle in the woods, while an immense outlying tract had been converted into a park with exotic attractions in the style of the time. here, then, was need of expert forestry--whence the opening of the school as aforesaid. once started, it became the duke's special pet and pride. his immense energy had found a new fad--that of the schoolmaster. he was bent on having a model training-school for the public service. in his own house, under his own eye, he proposed to mould the future servants of the state like potter's clay. in this way he would have them as he wanted them. to provide the clay for his experiment he began to look around for promising boys, and thus his eye fell on friedrich schiller. summoning the father and making some gracious inquiries, he offered to provide for the boy's education at the new school. the anxious captain, knowing that divinity was not to be on the program at castle solitude, sought to evade his sovereign's kindness by pleading that fritz had set his heart upon the service of the church. the reply was that something else, law for example, would no doubt do as well. resistance to the earthly providence was not to be thought of by a man in captain schiller's position; and so the step was taken which deprived some suabian flock of a shepherd and gave the world instead a great poet. it was on the 17th of january, 1773, that schoolboy schiller, with disappointment in his heart, said farewell to his tearful mother and took his cold way up the long avenue which led from ludwigsburg to castle solitude. according to the official record he arrived there with a chillblain, an eruption of the scalp, fourteen latin books, and forty-three kreutzers in money. soon afterwards his father signed a document whereby he renounced all control of the boy and left him in the hands of his prince. the school at solitude had now come to be known as the military academy, and well it deserved its name. the duke himself was the supreme authority in large matters and in small. the nominal head, called the intendant, was a high military officer who had a sufficient detail of majors, captains and lower officers to assist him in maintaining discipline. under the eye of these military potentates the _élèves_, as they were called,--for the official language of the school was french,--lived and moved in accordance with a rigid routine. they rose at six and marched to the breakfast-room, where an overseer gave them their orders to pray, to eat, to pray again, and then to march back. then there were lessons until one o'clock, when they prepared for the solemn function of dinner. dressed in the prescribed uniform,--a blue coat with white breeches and waistcoat, a leather stock and a three-cornered hat, with pendent queue and at each temple four little puffs,--they marched to the dining-room and countermarched to their places. when his highness gave the command, _dinez, messieurs_, they fell to and ate. from two to four there were lessons again, then exercise and study hours. at nine they were required to go to bed. there were no vacations and few holidays. visits to and from parents were prohibited, and letters sent or received had to be submitted to the intendant. books of a stirring character were proscribed, along with tobacco and toothsome edibles, and quarters were often searched for contraband articles. whoso transgressed received a 'billet', which he took to headquarters. punishments were numerous, if not very severe, and were sometimes administered by his highness in person. the duke wished his protégés to regard him as their father, but his system tended to the encouragement not so much of honest gratitude as of rank sycophancy. on occasion he could be very gracious and condescending,--would take the youngsters into his carriage, give them fatherly counsel, box their ears, suggest subjects for essays, offer himself as opponent at their disputations, and so forth. he was very proud of showing off the school to visitors. his birthday and franziska's were festal occasions, at which he would distribute the prizes in person and allow the winners, if of gentle birth, to kiss his hand; if commoners, to kiss the hem of his garment. a modern reader will be very ready with his criticism of these educational arrangements. the constant and petty surveillance, the deliberate alienation of boys from all ties of home and kindred, the systematic training in duplicity and adulation, were certainly not well calculated for a school of manhood. schiller himself, after his escape from the academy, was wont to speak very bitterly of the education that he had received there. nevertheless the school had its good points, especially after the removal to stuttgart, in 1775. here it became a combination of university (minus the theological faculty) with a school of art, a school of technology and a military academy proper. several of the professors were inspiring teachers who made friends of their students. the fame of the institution brought together promising young men from all parts of germany and from foreign parts; and several of them besides schiller attained distinction in after-life.[8] there was thus intellectual comradeship of the very best kind. and there was much freedom in the choice of studies. but the solid merits of the academy were the growth of time; in the beginning it was, for schiller at least, mere chaos and misery. the boy grew rapidly into a lank, awkward youngster for whom the military discipline was a great hardship; he never got entirely rid of the stiff gait and ungainly bearing which resulted from these early struggles with the unattainable. frequent illness led to a bad record on the books of the faculty. in 'conduite' he made but a poor showing, and he was several times billeted for untidiness. in latin and religion he got along fairly well, and in greek he actually took a prize toward the end of the year 1773. but the greek which procured him this distinction hardly went beyond the rudiments and was mostly brought with him from ludwigsburg. for mathematics he had but little talent. his bitterest trial, however, came with the law studies which he was obliged to take up in his second year. a dry subject, a dull teacher and an immature, reluctant pupil made a hopeless combination. and so he got the name of a dullard. during the whole of the year 1775 it is recorded that he was at the foot of his class. two bits of writing have come down to give us a glimpse of the boy's mind during these two years of helpless floundering. a detestable practice of the school authorities required the pupils to criticise one another in moral disquisitions. on one occasion the duke gave out the theme: 'who is the meanest among you?' schiller did his task in latin distichs which have been preserved. they show a healthy feeling for the odiousness of the business, but he cleverly shifts the responsibility to _dux serenissimus_, who must of course know what is good for him. then he proceeds to depict one karl kempff as the worst boy in school,--_defraudans socios, rudis ignarusque_,--but he hopes that the wretched sinner will yet mend his ways and become worthy of his gracious prince's favor. in a much longer prose document he portrays the characters of some two score schoolmates and finally his own. he begins modestly with a deprecatory address to his most gracious sovereign, without whose wise order he would never think of setting himself up as a judge of his fellows. the portraits are amusingly ponderous in style, but their substance is very creditable to their author's head and heart. toward the end he burns more incense to the duke: 'this prince who has enabled my parents to do well by me; this prince through whom god will attain his ends with me; this father who wishes to make me happy, is and must be much more estimable to me than parents who depend upon his favor.' he frankly confesses his own shortcomings: 'you will find me', he writes, 'often overhasty, often frivolous. you will hear that i am obstinate, passionate and impatient; but you will also hear of my sincerity, my fidelity and my good heart.' he owns that he has not thus far made the best use of his gifts, but he pleads illness in excuse. his gracious prince knows how eagerly he has taken up the study of the law and how happy he will be some day to enter the service of his country. but, he ventures to insinuate, he would be very much happier still if he could serve his country as a teacher of religion. the divinity was out of the question, but relief was at hand. toward the end of 1775, having come to terms with the stuttgart people, duke karl transferred his academy to more commodious quarters in the city. a department of medicine was added and schiller gladly availed himself of the duke's permission to enroll in the new faculty. his professional studies were now more to his taste and he applied himself to them with sufficient zeal to make henceforth a decent though never a brilliant record. his heart was already elsewhere. for some time past he had been nourishing his soul on forbidden fruit,--books that had to be smuggled in and were of course all the more seductive for that very reason. with a few intimates--scharffenstein, the von hovens and petersen--he formed a sort of literary club which read and discussed things. what they read spurred them to imitation and to mutual criticism. presently they commenced sending their productions to the magazines. schiller began to indulge in pleasing dreams of literary fame; and with this new-born confidence in himself there came, as his health improved, a firmer step, a more erect bearing and an increased energy of character. to be a poet by grace of god was better than the favor of princes. for some time, however, the youth's effusions gave little evidence of a divine call. his first poem to get into print was the one entitled 'evening', which appeared in haug's _suabian magazine_ in the autumn of 1776. in irregular rimed verses--the rimes often very suabian--we hear of sunset glories producing in the bard a divine ecstasy that carries him away through space. then he returns to earth and hears in the voices of evening a general symphony of praise. it is still the klopstockian strain of magniloquent religiosity, tempered somewhat by the influence of haller. in 'the conqueror', a poem published in 1777, the klopstockian note is still more audible. the form is a pseudo-antique strophe such as klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical denunciation of military ambition. the most awful curses are imprecated upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the german language.[9] no wonder that editor haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense, obscurity and exaggerated metatheses. nor is there much more of promise in the few occasional poems that have come down from schiller's salad days in the academy. one of them was inspired by a visit of the emperor joseph, whom our poet glorifies in strains almost too fervid for utterance.[10] the other two are birthday greetings to franziska von hohenheim--effusions of 'gratitude', as it is called. the gratitude purports to come, in one of the poems, from the _école des demoiselles_, which franziska had founded as a feminine pendant to the academy. schiller's verses, truth to tell, sound like rank fustian. the duke's mistress is glorified as a paragon of virtue. 'her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance promises immortality. her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a thousand virtuous deeds.' and so on. as poetic spokesman of the girls he pours out those 'elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish toward their kind and virtuous 'mother'. there are two or three extant school orations which likewise exhibit him in the rôle of a fervid eulogist. the rhetoric of them is very highfalutin, and the flattery would be nauseating if one did not remember that it was largely a matter of fashion. custom required that a prince be addressed in the language of adulation, and nothing in that line was too extravagant for the taste of the time. as for schiller, he had got the reputation of an orator and he only did what was expected of him as the public representative of the school. nor should we think too harshly of the duke for encouraging the foolishness, since he too only conformed to the custom of the old regime. at the same time it is a pleasure to learn from certain well authenticated anecdotes that he and his _élèves_ did not always live in a fool's paradise of sycophancy. there is a story, vouched for by weltrich, to the effect that schiller, who had acquired fame as a mimic, was one day asked by the duke, with franziska on his arm, to give an impromptu specimen of his powers by imitating his sovereign. the youth hesitated, but after some urging borrowed the duke's cane and proceeded to examine him. as his highness did not answer well, schiller exclaimed: 'oh, you are an ass!' then he took franziska's arm and began to walk away with her. serenissimus looked on with mixed emotions, but only said: 'come now, leave franzele to me!' the young schiller was nothing if not intense. when an emotion took possession of him it set him on fire, and the expression of it was like the eruption of a volcano. toward the end of his course at the academy he had a misunderstanding with his dear friend scharffenstein, with whom he had sworn eternal brotherhood. the result was a long letter of wild expostulation in this vein: what was the bond of our friendship? was it selfishness? was it frivolity? was it folly? was it an earthly, vulgar, or a higher, immortal, celestial bond? speak! speak! oh, a friendship erected like ours might have endured through eternity.... if you or i had died ten times, death should not have filched from us a single hour! what a friendship that might have been! and now! now! what has become of it?... hear, scharffenstein! god is there! god hears me and thee, and may god judge! and so on for six mortal pages, octavo print. the modern cynic will smile at this ecstatic cultus of friendship, but let him at the same time recall the saying of goethe that what makes the poet is a heart completely filled with one emotion.[11] it is now time to glance at the really important phase of schiller's youthful development--his reading. while his native suabia, just then rather backward in literary matters, was still chewing the cud of pious conventionality, a prodigious ferment had begun in the outside world. what is called the 'storm and stress' was under way. the spirit of revolt, which in france was preparing a political upheaval, was abroad in germany, where it found expression in stormy or sentimental plays and novels,--works composed on the principle that everything is permissible except the tame and the conventional. the productions of these young innovators differed widely from one another, but they had a common note in their vehement would-be naturalism. there were over-wrought pictures of daring sin and terrible punishment; novels and plays laying bare the _misère_ of the social conflict; tragedies of insurgent passion at war with conventional ideas; of true love crossed and done to death by the prejudice of caste. and so forth. how much of this literature fell into the hands of schiller at the academy can not be told with perfect certainty, but it would seem that very little of it escaped him. he read and was deeply touched by gerstenberg's 'ugolino', with its horrific picture of the agonies of starvation. he read the early writings of goethe, of leisewitz and of klinger, and was touched by the woes of miller's siegwart. in 'emilia galotti', with its drastic comment upon the infamies of princely lust, he saw the subject of court life in a light very different from that in which it habitually appeared to the carefully guarded pupils of the stuttgart academy. he became acquainted with ossian, and the shadowy forms of the celtic bard, big with their indefinable woe, increased the turmoil of his soul. probably he read rousseau more or less, though direct evidence of the fact is lacking. at any rate the air was surcharged with rousseauite feeling. certainly he read plutarch and cervantes, and along with all these came shakspere,[12] to whom he was introduced--in the wieland translation--by his favorite teacher, abel. the effect of this reading upon the mind of schiller was prodigious. it changed the native docility of his temper, weaned him completely from his seraphic proclivities and carried him with a rush into the mid-current of the literary revolution. there came a time when the young medical student, faithfully pursuing his routine and on festal occasions spouting fervid panegyrics of the noble karl and the divine franziska, was not altogether what he seemed to be. there was another schiller, burning with literary ambition and privately engaged in forging a thunderbolt. two dramatic attempts preceded 'the robbers'. the first had to do with cosmo dei medici; the second, called 'the student of nassau', was based upon a newspaper story of suicide. both were destroyed by their disgusted author, in what stage of progress we do not know. still he was not discouraged; the tragic drama was clearly his field and he might succeed better the next time. but where to find a subject? his perplexity became so great that, as he said later, he would have given his last shirt for a good theme. finally, in the year 1777, his friend hoven drew his attention to a story by schubart that had lately been published in the _suabian magazine_,--a story of a father and his two dissimilar sons, one of them frank and noble-minded but wild, the other a plausible moralist but at heart a scoundrel. schiller took the hint and began to write, his interest being no doubt increased by the miserable fate of schubart, who was then languishing in the hohenasperg as the helpless victim of karl eugen's pusillanimous tyranny.[13] just how much progress was made with 'the robbers' in the year 1777 is not known; probably not much, for schiller soon decided to drop his literary pursuits for the present and devote himself closely to his medical studies. perhaps he may have hoped by hard work to finish his course in four years instead of the expected five. at any rate he now bent to his toil and allowed the play to lie dormant in his mind. in 1779 he submitted a thesis on 'the philosophy of physiology', but it was judged unfit for print. the professors condemned it variously as tedious, florid, obscure, and, worst of all, disrespectful toward recognized authorities such as haller. in these judgments the duke concurred. he found that elève schiller had said many fine things and in particular had shown much 'fire'. but the fire was too strong; it needed to be 'subdued' by another year of study. it has usually been assumed by schiller's biographers that in his intense longing for liberty he was embittered by this disappointment, and that in his mood of wrath he now took up his neglected play and poured into it, hissing hot, the whole fury of his quarrel with the world. there is, however, no evidence that he really hoped to win his release from the academy in the year 1779, or that the thesis just spoken of was regarded as a graduation thesis.[14] neither his own letters nor those of his friends indicate that he was angry at being kept in school another year. probably the critics have made too much out of this factor of personal disgruntlement. schiller was a poetic artist, and his first play is much more than the wild expression of a plucked student's resentment. nevertheless it is only natural to suppose that his proud and ambitious spirit chafed more or less under the requirements of an academic routine that his manhood had outgrown. that he succeeded after all, at the end of the year 1779, in capturing a number of prizes and received them in the presence of goethe and the duke of weimar, who happened just then to be visiting stuttgart, could do but little to sweeten the bitter dose that had been prescribed for him. he now set about the preparation of a new thesis, and in the intervals of his professional occupation he worked with feverish energy upon 'the robbers'. to gain time for writing he would often feign illness, and when the duke or an inspector surprised him would hide his manuscript in a big medical treatise kept at hand for the purpose. a few comrades who were in the secret eagerly watched the progress of his work and vociferously applauded the scenes which he now and then read to them. one of these comrades has left it on record that in the excitement of composition schiller would often stamp and snort and roar.--and thus it was, in the stolen hours of the night and driven by the demon that possessed him, that he bodied forth his titanic drama of revolt. it was virtually finished during the year 1780. in after-time schiller reasoned himself into the conviction that art must be 'cheerful',[15] but very little of cheerfulness went to the composition of 'the robbers'. it was the disburthening of an oppressed soul that suffered horribly at times from morbid melancholy--the chicken-pox of youthful genius. a letter of june, 1780, shows how he had battled with the specters of despair. writing to captain von hoven, whose son had lately died, he says: a thousand times i envied your son as he was wrestling with death, and would have given up my life as calmly as i go to bed. i am not yet twenty-one years old, but i can tell you frankly that the world has no further charm for me. i have no delight in thinking of the world, and the day of my departure from the academy, which a few years ago would have been a day of festal joy, will not be able to force one happy smile from me. with each step, as i grow older, i lose more and more of my contentedness; and the nearer i come to the age of maturity, the more i could wish that i had died in childhood. this sounds gloomy enough, but the desperate mood did not last long, a number of medical reports written in the summer of 1780 indicate that schiller was able to take the calm professional view of a case very similar to his own. a fellow-student named grammont was afflicted with hypochondria, and schiller was set to watch him. his analysis of the case is eminently sane. he finds it difficult to decide whether the young man's malady has its seat in the mind or in the bowels: whether too much brooding over hard problems has ruined his digestion and given him a headache, or whether a physical derangement has confused his ideas of duty and religion. he thinks there is a fair chance of curing the patient by means of medicine and good advice.--a youth who can talk thus of another's _weltschmerz_ is himself in no great danger from the malady. in november, 1780, he submitted a new thesis upon 'the connection between man's animal and spiritual nature'. in this essay he considers the question whether, for the purposes of moral perfection, the body is to be regarded as the enemy and gaoler of the soul, or as its friend and coadjutor. the drift of his argument is to show in detail the dependence of the spirit upon the flesh. finding that philosophers have been unjust to the body, he comes to its rescue,--expounding good doctrine in an interesting though rather florid and unprofessional style. in the course of his philosophizing he perpetrates the sly joke of quoting from his own manuscript play and ascribing the words to an imaginary 'life of moor', by one krake.--further comment upon the essay may be dispensed with,[16] seeing that schiller as a medical man does not greatly interest us at the present time. enough that it was accepted and procured him his release from bondage toward the close of the year. afterwards, in the bitterness of his quarrel with the duke of württemberg, schiller took an altogether gloomy view of the training he had received at the military academy. he saw only the forcing process to which he had been subjected, the narrow life that had kept him from a knowledge of the world, and the petty restrictions that had prevented his love of poetry from developing in a sane and natural manner. however, it is always the poet's fate to grow strong through his own gifts and his own trials; what schools of any kind can do for him or against him is of comparatively little moment. had schiller enjoyed in his youth the freedom of a real university, his literary career would no doubt have opened differently, and with another beginning the whole would have been different; but whether it would then have interested the world after a hundred years, as that of the real schiller does, is a question for omniscience. speaking humanly one can only say that the misguided paternalism of karl eugen in rousing the tiger proved a blessing in disguise. and the schooling itself was by no means so despicable. schiller left the academy a good latinist, though with but little greek. he had learned to read french, if not english. he had dabbled in such philosophy as there was going and acquired an interest in the fundamental problems. he had read not widely but intensely--which is always better. he had made a number of good friends. and not least important for his future career, he had had an excellent opportunity to observe the forms and usages of high life.[17] footnotes: [footnote 1: what is known of her has been put together by ernst müller, in "schillers mutter, ein lebensbild", leipzig, 1894.] [footnote 2: "unsere mutter nährt sich gleichsam von beständiger sorge", wrote her son to his sister in 1784.] [footnote 3: as quoted by schiller's sister-in-law, karoline von wolzogen, in her 'life of schiller', first published in 1830. the baroness von wolzogen quoted from a manuscript by christophine, which was at that time in the family archives and has since been published in the _archiv für litteraturgeschichte_, i, 452. christophine wrote down her recollections in order to counteract the false stories of schiller's childhood which began to get into print soon after his death. of this character, for example, is the oft-repeated tale of his climbing a tree during a thunder-storm in order to see where the lightning came from. this is an invention of oemler, his earliest biographer, who invented much besides.] [footnote 4: an excellent account of him is to be found in vol. 15 of "allgemeine deutsche biographie".] [footnote 5: by schiller's youthful friend petersen, _morgenblatt_, 1807; quoted by weltrich, "friedrich schiller", i, 77, and by other biographers.] [footnote 6: wilhelm von hoven, quoted by karoline von wolzogen.] [footnote 7: as reported by his friend conz, _morgenblatt_, 1807. cf. weltrich, p. 80, foot-note.] [footnote 8: for example: cuvier, dannecker and the musician zumsteeg. the pros and cons of the karlschule are discussed very fully by weltrich and also by minor in their biographies of schiller.] [footnote 9: for example: und mit offenem schlund, welcher gebirge schluckt, ihn das weltmeer mir nach,--ihn mir der orkus nach durch die hallen des todes- deinen namen, eroberer!] [footnote 10: weltrich, p. 182, argues that the poem is spurious. the question is hard to decide.] [footnote 11: "götz von berlichingen", act i.] [footnote 12: the acquaintance began, it would seem, in 1775 or 1776. at first schiller was repelled by shakspere's 'coldness',--his intermixture of humor and buffoonery with pathos. of this first impression he wrote many years later, in his essay on 'naïve and sentimental poetry', as follows: "durch die bekanntschaft mit neueren poeten verleitet, in den werken den _dichter_ zuerst aufzusuchen, _seinem herzen_ zu begegnen ... war es mir unertraglich, dasz der poet sich hier gar nirgends fassen liesz und mir nirgends rede stehen wollte. mehrere jahre hatte er meine ganze verehrung, und war mein studium, ehe ich sein individuum lieb gewinnen konnte. ich war noch nicht fähig, die natur aus erster hand zu verstehen."] [footnote 13: schubart's crime was the utterance of a mild poetic lampoon to the effect that 'when dionysius of syracuse was compelled to go out of the tyranny business he became a schulmeisterlein.' he had also commented too frankly on the duke's relation to franziska. angered by these things karl caused him to be tricked over the borders into württemberg, seized, and without trial shut up in the dungeon of hohenasperg, where he was kept for ten years (1777-1787). schiller visited him in november, 1781, and was received with tears of joy as the author of 'the robbers'.] [footnote 14: cf. weltrich, i, 278.] [footnote 15: "ernst ist das leben, heiter ist die kunst."--_prologue to 'wallenstein'_.] [footnote 16: weltrich, i, 298 ff., analyzes it and discusses its scientific value at some length.] [footnote 17: kuno fischer, "schiller-schriften", i, 139, has some very interesting remarks on this subject. "woher gewann er [says fischer], der sohn eines dorfbarbiers,... eine solche sichere und eingelebte anschauung, ich möchte sagen, fühlung fürstlichen wesens, wenn nicht herzog karl, ein meister in der kunst fürstlichen repräsentierens, ihn zum modell gedient hätte?"] chapter ii the robbers o über mich narren, der ich wähnete die welt durch greuel zu verschönern und die gesetze durch gesetzlosigkeit aufrecht zu erhalten.--'_the robbers_'. after leaving the academy schiller soon began to look about for a publisher of his precious manuscript. not finding one he presently decided to borrow money and print the play at his own expense. it appeared in the spring of 1781, accompanied by a modest preface in which the anonymous author pronounced his work unsuited to the stage but hoped it would be acceptable as a moral contribution to literature. in less than a year it had been played with ever memorable success and ere long it was the talk of germany. in dealing with 'the robbers' it has always been much easier to point out faults than to do justice. schiller himself set the fashion of a drastic criticism which had the effect of advertising 'the robbers' as a violent youthful explosion containing more to be apologized for than to be admired. and indeed it is not a masterpiece of good taste. upon an adult mind possessing some knowledge of the world's dramatic literature at its best, and particularly if the piece be read and not seen, schiller's first play is very apt to produce the impression of a boyish extravaganza. the sentimental bandit who nourishes his mighty soul on the blood of his fellow-men, and undertakes to right a private wrong by running amuck against society in another part of the world, is a figure upon which we decline to waste our sympathy. we have no place for him in our scheme of art unless it be in comic opera or in the penny dreadful. emotionally we have lost touch with him as we have with byron's corsair. when he stalks across the serious stage and rages and fumes and wipes his bloody sword, we are inclined to smile or to yawn. as for the villain franz, with his abysmal depravity, and amalia, with her witless sentimentalism, we find it hard to take them seriously; they do not produce a good illusion. and then the whole style of the piece, the violent and ribald language, the savage action, the rant and swagger, the shooting and stabbing,--all this seems at first calculated for the entertainment of young savages, and moves one to approve the oft-quoted _mot_ of the german prince who said to goethe: 'if i had been god and about to create the world, and had i foreseen that schiller would write 'the robbers' in it, i should not have created it.'[18] this is one side of the story. the other side is that 'the robbers' made an epoch in german dramatic literature. not only is it the strongest and completest expression of the eighteenth-century storm and stress, but it proved a highly effective stage-play. nor was its success ephemeral. its author quickly outgrew it, but it maintained itself during the entire period of germany's leadership in matters of dramatic art, and even to-day it preserves much of its old vitality. it is true that when a modern audience assembles to see a performance of 'the robbers', they are not impelled solely by the intrinsic merits of the piece. loyalty to the great dramatic poet of the nation plays its part. people think: thus our schiller began,--and they expect to make allowances. but when all such allowances are made, it remains true that 'the robbers' is a powerful stage-play which reveals in every scene the hand of the born dramatist. we may call it boyish if we will, but its boyishness is like that of 'titus andronicus'. each is the work of a young giant who in learning the use of his hammer lays about him somewhat wildly and makes a tremendous hubbub. but thor is thor, and such boys are not born every day. the starting-point of schiller's invention was the conception of the two hostile brothers, and this he had from schubart, although other writers, notably klinger and leisewitz, had already made use of it in dramatic productions. in the schubart story[19] we hear of a nobleman with two sons, of whom the elder, karl, is high-minded but dissolute, while the younger, wilhelm, is a hypocritical zealot. karl plays the rôle of the prodigal son and his excesses are duly reported at home by his brother. after a while the sinner repents and writes his father a remorseful letter, which is intercepted by wilhelm. then the older brother returns to the vicinity of his home and takes service with a poor farmer. here it falls to his lot to rescue his father from the hands of assassins. it turns out that the instigator of the murder was no other than wilhelm. when the plot is discovered the magnanimous karl entreats pardon for his vile brother. his prayer is granted, wilhelm receives a share of the estate and all ends in happy tears.--in publishing the sketch schubart recommended it to the geniuses of the day as an excellent foundation for a novel or a comedy. here was a chance, he thought, to prove that the germans, notwithstanding the servility of their pens, were not the spiritless race that foreigners saw in them; 'to show that we too, in spite of our oppressive forms of government, which permit only a condition of passivity, are men who have their passions and can act, no less than a frenchman or a briton.' he therefore cautioned any playwright who might try his hand upon the subject to lay the scene not in a foreign country but in contemporary germany. we see here the thought that struck fire in the mind of young schiller, whose bent was all for tragedy. if there was to be a proof that strong passion and bold action were still possible, notwithstanding the degeneracy of the age, what better object could there be for the passion to wreak itself upon than the age itself? if life had become vapid, and the german character servile and pusillanimous, here was the very field for a mad ajax who should make havoc among the cowards and the pigmies. in schubart's tragi-comedy there are no heroic passions whatever. nothing is conceived in a large and bold way. the characters live and move throughout in the little world of their own selfish interests. such a piece, in which the penitent hero bends his back to the plow and weakly pardons an abominable crime, did not comport with schiller's mood of fierce indignation. so he converted the story into a tragedy and turned schubart's meek and forgiving prodigal into a terrible avenger of mankind. in the contrasted brothers we see what minor[20] well enough calls the hot and cold passions. karl is a hotspur whose emotions are always keyed up to the highest pitch; he is never calm and is incapable of sober reasoning. his boiling blood and his insensate ambition are his only oracles. we may say that his motives are lofty, but in trying to set the world right and make it conform to his perfervid dreams of justice and freedom, he becomes a madman and a criminal. franz, on the other hand, represents the scheming intellect sundered from conscience and natural feeling. he is a monster of cool, calculating, hypocritical villainy. at the end he cowers in abject terror before the phantom conscience that he has reasoned out of existence in the first act. the portrait of the two brothers, as thus conceived, is crudely simple. there are no delicacies of shading, no subtleties of psychological analysis. in short, robber moor and his brother give the impression of having been made to a scheme rather than copied from nature. nevertheless the scheme is conceived with superb audacity and executed with a dramatic power and insight that had never been surpassed in germany. to understand the furore created by 'the robbers' one should read two other storm-and-stress plays, by writers of no mean dramatic talent, which present the same fundamental situation,[21]--'the twins', by klinger, and 'julius of tarentum', by leisewitz. both these plays came out in the year 1776 and were evidently studied with care by schiller. both follow the timid example which had been set by lessing of laying the scene in a foreign land, klinger gives us two brothers, guelfo and ferdinando, of whom neither the mother nor her physician can tell which was born first. but ferdinando has always been treated as the elder, has enjoyed the favor of his father, risen to power and distinction and won the prize in love. he is of a noble and forgiving temper and plays only a subordinate part. the hero is guelfo, who, like schiller's karl moor, has read plutarch and would fain do something great, like brutus or cassius. but he remains after all only a poor knight. his hand is unnerved and his heroic spirit paralyzed by the suspicion that he has been the life-long victim of a conspiracy; that he and not ferdinando is the elder brother. the whole interest of the play turns upon the portraiture of his morbid, insensate jealousy. in the fourth act he takes a morning ride with his brother and murders him. then he defiantly reports the deed at home and is himself slain by his father. in 'julius of tarentum' the younger brother, guido, is, again, the man of action; a _miles gloriosus_ who boasts of his strong arm and dreams of glory. he looks with contempt and hatred upon his gentle, sentimental brother julius, who, though heir to the throne, prepares to renounce his career because he is thwarted in love. the girl blanca, upon whom he has fixed his affections, is not deemed a suitable bride for him by his father and has been shut up in a convent. he determines to abduct her by night and flee with her to some romantic spot in the far north. in the execution of this purpose he is killed by his jealous brother guido, who is then made to suffer death at the hands of his own father. in both these plays we have, as in 'the robbers', an aged father whose dynastic hopes center in an excellent son; this son the object of mad jealousy on the part of a younger brother, and both brothers in love with the same girl. the plays exhibit talent of a high order, but talent that always falls short of genius. psychical states are portrayed by means of talk, and the talk is big enough; but very little actually happens. the mighty passions have to be taken largely upon trust and the conversation often drags. dramatic possibilities are not fully grasped, the situations are felt but not seen, and there is an obvious reluctance to make unusual demands upon the stage. even klinger, whose play of 'storm and stress' gave a name to the whole contemporary movement in german literature, reads tamely enough in comparison with 'the robbers'. but what is most noteworthy of all, klinger and leisewitz give us simply dynastic tragedies. in both the outlook is limited to the fortunes of a single house. in both we miss the great dramatist who looks upon life with a roving eye and intertwines his tale of private woe with the larger tangle of human destiny. this last is what the young schiller did with masterly insight. he converted the dynastic tragedy of his predecessors into a tragedy of the social revolution; and his work has lived because we can hear in it the preliminary roar of the storm which was soon to burst in the streets of paris.[22] he laid his scene not in far-off italy nor in the remote past, but in germany and in the middle of the century which boasted of its enlightened philosophy and its excellent police regulations. of the two brothers he took the sentimentalist for his hero, but made him at the same time a man of action, a man of heroic mould and a self-helper. the logic of rousseau finds in karl moor a practical interpreter. what the frenchman had preached concerning the infamies of civilization, the badness of society and politics, the reign of injustice and unreason, the petty squabbles of the learned, the necessity of a return to nature,--all this seethes in the blood of moor, but he does not content himself with indignant rhetoric or sentimental repining. he takes arms against the sea of troubles. instead of an excellent youth pitifully done to death by a jealous brother, we get a towering idealist who is the moulder of his own fate. with sublime [greek: hubris] he takes it upon himself to wield the avenging bolts of jove, but finds that jove rejects his assistance. he errs disastrously in his judgment, like any short-sighted mortal, and his work goes all agley. but when the end comes it is not depressing. we see no longer a revolting fratricide and the painful sacrifice of virtue to the meanest of passions, but the verdict of the gods upon human presumption. in making his hero a defiant self-helper and sending him with sword in hand against the minions of the established order, schiller was obviously influenced by the example of 'götz von berlichingen'. like götz, karl moor regards himself as the champion of freedom against the law, which is its enemy. both are friends of the oppressed and haters of pedantry and pettifoggery. both fight like lions against tremendous odds. both assume the leadership of a band of outlaws whom they cannot control, and thus become responsible for revolting crimes not foreseen or intended. but along with these and other resemblances that might be pointed out there is an important difference. in the fourth act of the earlier play a heilbronn councillor says to götz: 'we owe no faith to a robber.' whereat götz exclaims: 'if you did not wear the emperor's emblem, which i honor in the vilest counterfeit, you should take back that word or choke upon it. mine is an honorable feud.' that is, the knight of the sixteenth century repudiates the name in which karl moor glories. says schiller's pater in the second act: 'and you, pretty captain! duke of cutpurses! king of scoundrels! great mogul of all rogues under the sun!' to which moor replies: 'very true. very true. just proceed.' in comparison with such a daredevil goethe's hero seems to roar like a sucking dove. in his own mind götz never really burns the bridge behind him. he is at heart a loyalist who recognizes the emperor's claim to his allegiance. as a free imperial knight he feels himself within his right under the feudal system. in resisting his enemies he does not set himself in opposition to governmental authority _per se_, but only to the abuse of authority by subordinates who disgrace their master and his. and in assuming the leadership of the insurgent rabble he thinks to restrain their ferocity and thus earn the thanks of the supreme authority.--it remained for schiller to convert this rude self-helper in the age of expiring feudalism into a savage anarchist in the boastful age of enlightenment. it was a bold idea to be conceived by a youth in a school where every third word was of virtue and philanthropy. not that there was anything particularly audacious in a strong presentation of the spirit of revolt. for some time past this spirit had been nourished by the writings of rousseau and those who followed in his wake, until attacks upon the social order, in some phase of it, had come to be almost the staple of literature. but the attacks had not been very dangerous. either they were veiled by a distant setting of the scene, or the indictment of the age was presented incidentally in connection with some lacrimose tragedy of the individual. people had learned to sigh and weep that things should be so, but there the matter ended. the german princeling could look on with equanimity, assured that the rhetoric and the tears did not mean him, or that if they did it did not matter. in real life those who felt themselves oppressed by the civilization of europe could emigrate, and they did emigrate in large numbers. this was one form of the return to nature. in literature, however, the usual expedient was to let the hero chafe himself to death and go down, without striking a blow, before the irresistible tyranny of the established order. schiller's hero is of another ilk. romantic flight with his lady-love does not occur to him. surrender to the wrong is out of the question. he finds another form for the return to nature and puts into practice the maxim, here or nowhere is america. he stays and fights at the head of a troop of bandits. thus the play which was originally to have been called 'the lost son' became 'the robbers'. in their way, then, schiller's outlaws stand for the state of nature. they represent natural man rising in brute strength against the oppressions of a depraved society. such at least is karl moor's construction of the matter when he says to the pater: 'tell them that my business is retribution, that my trade is vengeance.' under our modern development of the social sentiment we can hardly imagine a really high-minded youth setting out in such a quixotic and fanatical enterprise. this feature of schiller's plot, which has for us something of the burlesque about it, has been taken more than any other to prove his inexperience of life. but the fact is that the thing was after all not so unthinkable. outlawry on a large scale was by no means unknown, and the romance of outlawry was familiar in literature. the thirty years' war had familiarized germany with marauding bands who recognized no authority save that of their leader. even in the eighteenth century the brigandage which was common in the mediterranean countries continued to flourish in southern germany. as late as 1781, the very year in which 'the robbers' appeared, we hear of the capture in bavaria of a band of outlaws numbering nearly a thousand men. the year 1771 witnessed the execution of the robber-chieftain klostermayer, who, under the name of the bavarian hiesel, became the subject of an idealizing saga in which we recognize the essential features of karl moor.[23] schiller's main fiction was thus, in a sense, warranted by the facts; and it gains further in artistic plausibility when we consider that the idealized bandit was already a familiar type in literature. the author of 'the robbers' was acquainted with robin hood, and he had probably read 'the two gentlemen of verona', in which the banished valentine becomes the captain of a band of outlaws on condition that they "do no outrages on silly women or poor passengers", and the outlaws reply that they "detest such vile, base practices."[24] he had also read, in 'don quixote', of the high-toned robber, roque guinart, who had more of compassion, in his nature than cruelty. cervantes makes roque comment thus upon his mode of life: "injuries which i could not brook and thirst for revenge first led me into it contrary to my nature; for the savage asperity of my present behavior is a disgrace to my heart, which is gentle and humane." at the end of the episode roque sends his captives away "admiring his generosity, his gallantry, and his extraordinary conduct, and looking upon him rather as an alexander the great than as a notorious robber."[25] here was a sufficient hint for a criminal in the grand style, who should imagine himself the spiritual congener of plutarch's heroes. 'a singular don quixote whom we abominate and love, admire and pity',--such was schiller's own formula for his first dramatic hero. from the standpoint of ordinary logic it must be admitted that moor's motive for becoming a robber (the lying letter that he receives from franz) is quite insufficient. he is duped too easily and should have known his brother better. he is too ready to give up everything dear to him, including the dear amalia. 'i have no sweetheart any more', is a weak surrender for a man of his heroic stamp. in any case the wrong that has been done him is a private wrong that has nothing to do with the constitution of society. one does not see how it is to be righted or how the world is to be purged of such baseness by killing and plundering people in the bohemian forest. the only reply which our drama makes to this objection is to be found in moor's crazy ambition for distinction. he has the 'great-man-mania'. what attracts him in the career of crime is not the wickedness but the bigness of it; the opportunity of lifting himself above the common herd and sending his name down to posterity as that of a very extraordinary person. 'i loathe this ink-spattering century', he says, 'when i read in my plutarch of great men.... i am to squeeze my body into a corset and lace up my will in laws.... law has never made a great man, but freedom hatches out colossi and extremes, o that the spirit of hermann were still glowing in the ashes! place me at the head of an army of fellows like myself, and germany shall become a republic in comparison with which rome and sparta were nunneries.' such, monstrous egotism needs no motive, but only an occasion, for breaking with the order of civilization. an occasion is furnished by the letter. but that which marks karl moor as a genuine child of schiller's imagination and of the sentimental age is his combination of virile energy with soft-heartedness and true nobility of feeling. in all his robbings and burnings he does not become vulgarized like his comrades. he imagines that he is engaged in a righteous work and has god on his side. for this reason he has a right to his melting moods, as, for example, in the famous and oft-praised scene on the danube. this delicacy of feeling, which to an american or englishman is apt to seem absurd in a bandit-chief who is engaged in wholesale crime, is an essential part of moor's character. it is this which, on german soil, gave to 'the robbers' tragic interest and insured its immortality. one sees all along that moor is a wanderer in the dark, and one can sympathize with his purposes and his dreams while detesting his conduct. this makes him a heroic figure. and when the clearing-up comes and he discovers that he has been the victim not of society but of an individual villain; that his attempt to right wrongs by committing new wrongs, to enforce the laws by lawlessness, and to correct violence by violence, was nothing but presumptuous and criminal folly,--when all this becomes clear to him, we have a tragic situation of the most pathetic character. this element of high tragic pathos was first given to a german drama by schiller. it had not been given by goethe and lessing, nor was it in them to give it. this is why german tragedy in the true sense may be said to have its beginning in 'the robbers'. that schiller in a sense sympathized with his hero is undeniable. what gives vitality to the character is here as always the fact that the author looked into his own heart and then wrote. this, however, only means that the moods of moor are veritable moods of schiller, raised to a white heat and translated into action. the young student, dreaming the dreams of youth and pining for freedom and action, had more than once felt his gorge rise to the choking-point as he found himself forced to plod on among the dull, oppressive, unheroic facts of life; and those acts of official villainy against which moor draws the sword he had himself seen flourishing unavenged in his native württemberg. but, on the other hand, he was never for a moment insensible to the moral hideousness and the tragic folly of moor's conduct. it was to be sublime, but insane and calamitous nevertheless. one is justified in thinking, therefore, that goedeke goes too far, or does not express the truth felicitously, when he says that the author of 'the robbers' 'felt himself one' with his hero.[26] he felt himself one with certain phases of moor's thought and feeling; for the rest, however, the robber-chieftain was to be abominated as well as admired. there has been too much of the tendency to see in 'the robbers' only a personal document; only a youth's incoherent cry for liberty. the piece is a work of art, duly calculated with reference to artistic effects. turning now from the figure of karl to that of his brother, one is struck at once with the artificiality of the portrait. we seem to have before us in franz moor the result of a deliberate effort to conceive the vilest possible travesty of human nature. nothing here that was copied from nature, nothing that schiller found in his own heart. it is all a brain-spun creation, born of his dramatic reading and of his studies in medicine and philosophy. in the first place we can observe that franz is studiously contrasted with his brother. karl is an idealist and a man of sentiment; franz is a materialist to whom the natural emotions of the heart are objects of cynical derision. for karl, who knows his klopstock as well as his plutarch, love is a transcendental dream foretelling a spiritual union in a world without end; for franz it is carnal appetite. karl wears his heart upon his sleeve; franz is wily and hypocritical. the one is handsome and chivalrous, the other ill-favored and cruel. the jealous cadet who plots criminally against his more fortunate brother is common to both leisewitz and klinger, but in neither is he an intriguing villain. in 'julius of tarentum' guido is really the more masterful man of the two. he despises his brother as a weakling and asserts no other claim than that of the strongest. in klinger's play, as we have seen, everything is made to turn upon guido's cankering doubt of his brother's seniority. one gets the impression that if the doubt could be settled by indisputable evidence in favor of ferdinando, there would be no _casus belli_; the younger son would bow to the law of primogeniture and that would end the matter. schiller, however, felt the need of a bolder contrast to his hero. the 'sublime criminal' required a colossal foil; and as equality with the sword was out of the question, the most obvious recourse was to pit natural depravity against natural greatness; scheming intellect against hot blood. in working out his conception schiller took counsel freely of shakspere, whose name had now become for young germany the symbol of all things great in dramatic writing. the first soliloquy of franz moor reminds one at once of edmund in 'lear', though there is none of the kind of borrowing which makes easy prey for the philologist. both villains covet the wealth and station of a preferred brother; both make use of a specious obstetrical argument and both operate with forged letters. in general, however, the portrait of franz was more influenced by richard the third than by edmund, or iago, or any of the other shaksperian villains. franz is the british richard divested of his shaksperian lordliness, transferred to a humbler sphere of action and provided with the mental outfit of an eighteenth-century _philosophe_, as seen by hostile critics. both descant on their own deformity and confide to the public their villainous designs. but while richard speaks in a tone of genial cynicism, as if his principal concern were only to bring a little variety into the tameness of "these fair, well-spoken days", the german villain solemnly turns himself inside out and regales us _ad nauseam_ with the metaphysics of iniquity. this is his mode of reasoning: why did nature put upon me this burden of ugliness--this laplander's nose, this moorish mouth, these hottentot eyes? death and destruction! why was she such a partisan?--but no, i do her injustice. she gave us wit when she placed us naked and miserable on the shore of this great ocean-world. swim who can, and whoso is too clumsy let him sink. the right is with him that prevails. family honor? a valuable capital for him that knows how to profit by it.--conscience? an excellent scarecrow with which to frighten sparrows from cherry-trees.--filial love? where is the obligation? did my father beget me because he loved me? did he think of me at all? is there anything holy in his gratification of carnal appetite? or shall i love him because he loves me? that is mere vanity, the usual predilection of the artist for his own work. such is the ethical attitude of franz moor, as we gather it from his first soliloquy. one sees that schiller was concerned to portray a scoundrel who had read deeply and come to the conclusion that in a world like this there is no valid reason why a man should be virtuous. evidently the author had himself breathed the mephitic air of eighteenth-century skepticism. his natural goodness of heart safeguarded him from corruption, but it pleased him as artist to dip his pen in the blackest ink and draw the picture of the devil with whom he had wrestled in moments of solitary musing. in spite of his intellectual subtlety, however, franz is a rather dull villain. his philosophical and physiological pedantry--for schiller endows him lavishly with the special lore of the medical man--obfuscates his vision for the ordinary facts of human nature. he has upon the whole a more intelligible motive for his rascality than iago, but he is much less interesting, much less picturesque, for simple lack of mother-wit. what a woeful blunder, for example, is his attempt to win amalia by depicting her absent lover, at great length and with all manner of revolting details, as the victim of the most loathsome of diseases! and why should such a crafty schemer risk his neck and put himself in the hands of a dangerous confederate for the purpose of hastening by a few hours the demise of a childish old man who is already in his power? and in his final agony of terror, when we should expect him to hide himself or try to escape, how absurd that he should summon pastor moser merely for the purpose of arguing with him upon immortality and judgment! we see that he is after all a wretched coward who has merely cheated us into the belief that he has put away the superstitions of orthodox belief, while in reality they still linger in his blood. we miss in him the invincible sang-froid of villainy which might have given a touch of shaksperian grandeur to his character. as it is, he is not grand, but pitiable and revolting. when he strangles himself with his hat-band, one is quite satisfied with the unheroic manner of his taking-off. the subordinate characters of the piece are hardly worth discussing at any length. the elder moor is a mere nonentity,--a dummy in a rocking-chair would have done as well. evidently schiller was concerned to make the way as easy as possible for the clumsy villainy of franz. a more vigorous father, he may have felt, would have necessitated a more subtle and plausible intrigue, which would have diverted attention from the main issue of the contrasted sons. the heroine amalia has always been recognized, and was immediately recognized by schiller himself, as the weakest character in the play. but posterity's criticism is hardly that formulated by him, namely, that we miss in amalia the 'gentle, suffering, pining thing--the maiden.'[27] of gentle, suffering, pining things there is no dearth in the german drama, and they were not in schiller's line. nearly all of his women are made of heroic stuff, and we honor him not the less for that. no one should blame amalia for boxing the ears of franz or drawing the sword upon him: it is unladylike conduct, but very good storm-and-stress realism. what one must deplore, however, is the general mental inadequacy that is paired with this spasmodic energy of scorn. common sense is not the highest of dramatic qualities, but a modicum of it would have made schiller's first heroine, to say the least, more interesting. she has no power of initiative and seems made only to be duped. her inability to recognize her lover in the fourth act is a terrible strain upon one's patience. indeed the whole love-affair between her and karl is utterly un-human. what can one think, for example of a pair of ecstatically faithful lovers to whom it has evidently never occurred to write to each other? here, if anywhere, one recalls schiller's oft-quoted observation that he had attempted in 'the robbers' to depict human beings before he had seen any.[28] aside from his acquaintance with franziska von hohenheim, and an occasional nearer view of the coy maidens of the _école des demoiselles_, the female sex and the grand passion were for him only bookish mysteries. of the subordinate outlaws there are several whose portraits are very well drawn. here schiller was able to profit by the psychological observations he had made upon his comrades in the academy. there were no cutthroats there, but there were traits and exploits, animosities and fidelities, which only needed to be heated in the poetic crucible in order to befit the rôle of robbers in the bohemian forest. in particular we may guess that the blatherskite jew, spiegelberg, with his swaggering self-conceit and his bestial vulgarity, was copied to some extent from life, though nothing definite is known of his original. taken as a whole the robbers form a picturesque company, each with his own character. shakspere would probably have been content to say 'first robber','second robber', etc.; but for schiller, accustomed to the pose of leadership among his fellows, to company drill and to the weighing of men according to their moral qualities, this was not enough. there had to be sheep and goats, classified according to their loyalty. on the one hand, closest to the leader stand the devoted roller, the sturdy schweizer and the romantic idealist, kosinsky; on the other are the envious malcontent, spiegelberg, and the wretched schufterle. the others, less distinctly characterized, represent the mass. it will now be in order to look at 'the robbers' a moment from the point of view of dramatic art.[29] in a suppressed preface to the first edition schiller expressed himself very contemptuously with regard to the stage, declaring that he had essayed a dramatized story and not a stage-play. he would not advise that his work be put upon the boards; for the rabble of the theater would not understand him, would take him for an apologist of vice, and so forth. there seems no good reason to doubt the essential sincerity of these expressions, though their author quickly changed his tune when the staging of 'the robbers' became a practical question. in the heat of authorship, however, he had aimed at a literary rather than a dramatic triumph. his chief models were literary dramas. 'götz von berlichingen' had won its way into favor as a book for the reader. the dramatic works of klinger, lenz, wagner and the like, were for the most part too extravagant and amorphous for representation, and shakspere's day had not yet come. this being so, it is a fact of interest that 'the robbers' first captured the public as a stage-play, and that too in a very much modified version, from which all references to contemporary society had been expunged, the action having been dated back into the fifteenth century. this indicates that the initial success of the work was not due mainly to the social 'tendency' which we see in it, but to its dramatic power. and the dramatic power is there. with but slender knowledge of the rules and the conventions, without ever having seen a moderately good play in his life, with little help save from the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, the young student had shown himself at a stroke the coming dramatist of his nation. let us freely admit that he had not shown himself a master of dramatic craftsmanship. faulty the piece no doubt is in several particulars. the soliloquies of franz are too long-winded, and the same may be said of some of the robber-scenes. spiegelberg's vulgar tongue is allowed to wag too freely. contempt of quotidian probability is now and then carried so far as to produce an unintended effect of burlesque: as when the robbers, who are merely dissolute students from leipzig, fight with twenty times their number of soldiers, lose one man and slay three hundred. again, one does not quite see the moral necessity of honest schweizer's killing himself, when he has the misfortune to find franz dead. he has indeed promised to capture him or die in the attempt, but his promise was never meant to cover the case of the villain's suicide. under the circumstances his shooting himself is mere exuberance of dramatic bloodshed. but how absurd it would be to dwell upon these things as if they were serious defects! young schiller undertook to shaksperize. his parole was not to be the natural and the probable, but the extraordinary, the tremendous. why then should he have been more timid than the author of 'lear' and 'macbeth'? one who is borne along by a whirlwind may be pardoned for ignoring the rules and the proprieties. of course it is not intended to compare 'the robbers' with the riper works of shakspere. that would be absurd, and yet no more absurd than to gird at schiller for doing what we pardon or even admire in shakspere. like every great dramatist schiller has an indefeasible right to demand that we take his point of view, make his assumptions and enter into the spirit of his creation. and when we do this, how magnificently he carries us along! what animation in the dialogue everywhere, and what fire in the robber-scenes! from first to last the play fairly throbs with passion, and always with passion made visible. it is all action, all meant to be done and seen. extravagant it is, no doubt; but while there are always hundreds of critics in the world who can see that and say it more or less cleverly, there is but one man in a century who can write such scenes. footnotes: [footnote 18: the schubart story is reprinted by weltrich, i, p. 183 ff., who attempts to trace its provenience. it was not entirely fiction. cf. minor, i, 298, to whom this chapter is indebted in many places.] [footnote 19: eckermann's "gespräche mit goethe", under date of jan. 17, 1827.] [footnote 20: "schiller, sein leben und seine werke," i, 299.] [footnote 21: bitter family fends, and particularly the fiction of the hostile brothers,--with motives of rivalry, jealousy and hatred, with paternal curses and parricide and fratricide and filicide,--were just then a literary fashion. it is worth noting in this connection that j.m.r. lenz published in 1776 a story entitled "die beiden alten", in which a son shuts up his father in a cellar and sends a man to kill him. but the man's heart fails him and the prisoner escapes,--to reappear like a ghost among his kin. that schiller read this story is at any rate thinkable, though there is no direct evidence of the fact.] [footnote 22: cf. minor, i, 300: "die räuber des jungen schiller, welcher sich damals nicht einmal um den nordamerikanischen freiheitskrieg, geschweige denn um das gewitterschwüle frankreich bekümmerte, waren nur ein symptom und eine vorahnung; eine wirkung im kleinen vor der groszen katastrophe."] [footnote 23: cf. minor, i, 313 ff.] [footnote 24: act iv, scene i.] [footnote 25: "don quixote," chapter 89.] [footnote 26: "grundrisz zur geschichte der deutschen dichtung", v, 19.] [footnote 27: sämmtliche schriften, ii, 365. citations from schiller refer, unless otherwise expressly indicated, to goedeke's historico-critical edition in 15 vols. stuttgart, 1867-1876.] [footnote 28: sämmtliche schriften, iii, 529.] [footnote 29: cf. bulthaupt, "dramaturgie des schauspiels," i, 209, who has some excellent remarks upon the dramatic qualities of the play and the histrionic problems connected with it.] chapter iii the stuttgart medicus so gewisz ich sein werk verstehe, so musz er starke dosen in emeticis ebenso lieben als in aestheticis, und ich möchte ihm lieber zehen pferde als meine frau zur kur übergeben.--_review of 'the robbers', 1782_. the career that opened before schiller on his release from the academy, in december, 1780, turned out a wretched mockery of his hopes. he had, or supposed he had, the right to expect a decent position in the public service and a measure of liberty befitting a man who had served his time under tutelage. what his august master saw fit to mete out to him, however, was neither the one nor the other: he was stationed at stuttgart as 'medicus' to an ill-famed regiment consisting largely of invalids. his pay was eighteen florins a month--say seven or eight dollars. his duties consisted of routine visits to the hospital and daily appearance at parade, with reports upon the condition of the luckless patients whom he doctored savagely with drastic medicines. withal he was required to wear a stiff, ungainly uniform which did not carry with it the distinction of an 'officer' and exposed him to the derision of his friends. a humble petition of captain schiller that his son be permitted to wear the dress of a civilian and extend his practice among the people of the city met with a curt refusal. of schiller's personal appearance at about this time we have two or three descriptions by friends who knew him well.[30] putting them together we get a picture something like the following: he was about five feet and nine inches in height, erect of bearing and knock-kneed. he had reddish hair, a broad forehead, and bushy eyebrows which came close together over a long, thin, arched nose. he was near-sighted. his eyes, of a bluish-gray color, were usually inflamed, but very expressive when he spoke with animation. one friend credits him with an 'eagle's glance', another with an uncanny, demonic expression. he had a strong chin, a prominent under-lip, and sunken, freckled cheeks. altogether his face and bearing told of immense energy.--one can imagine how the creator of karl moor must have felt in his new situation. the young lion had escaped from one cage into another that was even worse. nevertheless the new life did not altogether preclude an occasional sip from the cup of earthly cheer. the young medicus found himself within easy reach of a number of jovial friends whom he had known at the academy. with one of these, a youth named kappf, he hired a room of a certain frau vischer, a widow who was to become the muse of his high-keyed songs to laura. the furniture consisted of a table and two benches. in one corner were usually to be seen a pile of potatoes and some plates. here the friends feasted upon sausage and potato-salad of their own make, a bottle of wine being added if the host happened to be in funds. sometimes there were convivial card-parties at a local inn, where more than enough wine was drunk and bills were run up that still remain unpaid. tradition tells of a military banquet from which our medicus had to be assisted home. a nobler pleasure incident to the new life was the opportunity of frequent visits to castle solitude. for eight years schiller had been cut off from intercourse with his parents and sisters, save through the medium of officially inspected letters. returning now at last he found his mother in frail health, but his father still vigorous and active. sister christophine had grown into a strong and self-reliant young woman, the mainstay of the household. she took an interest in literature, loved her brother devotedly, had a sister's boundless faith in his genius, and now became his confidante and amanuensis. another sister, louise, had reached the age of fourteen, two others had died, and the youngest of all, nanette, was now three years old. it was a happy, sensible, affectionate family-circle, in which the long-lost son and brother found sweet relief from the _misère_ of stuttgart. the only cloud in the sky was the mother's anxiety for the welfare of her son's soul, with the resulting necessity of replying somewhat disingenuously to her tender inquiries into his religious condition. to his parents and sister the disgruntled medicus expressed freely his disappointment at the provision which the duke had made for him. a hard fate, indeed, to have studied seven years for the privilege of starving one's mind and body as an insignificant army doctor! it was partly the hope of earning money that led him to seek a publisher for 'the robbers'. friend petersen was exhorted to find one, if possible, and was promised whatever he could get for the piece over and above fifty florins. but petersen had no luck and at last the ambitious author decided, as the author of 'götz' had done before him, to print his drama at his own expense. the money that he borrowed for the purpose, on the security of a friend, involved him in debts that were to hang over him for years and cause him endless trouble. his plan once formed he began to take counsel with friends and revise his manuscript in the light of their criticisms. even after the printing had begun, the revision continued. things looked differently in the cold type of the proof-sheet, and he saw that he had occasionally gone too far in the direction of coarseness and extravagance. thus the original draft had provided that amalia should actually be sent to a convent, and that the furious karl should appear with his robbers and threaten to convert the nunnery into a brothel unless his sweetheart should be delivered to him. this scene was condemned and the exploit given a more appropriate place among the _res gestae_ of spiegelberg. in many places extravagant diction was toned down. the original preface, which was mainly occupied with a labored defence of the literary drama as against the stage-play, was rejected, and a new preface written which was devoted chiefly to moral considerations. the author here admitted that he had portrayed characters who would offend the virtuous, but insisted that he could not do otherwise if he was to copy nature, because in the real world virtue shines only in contrast with vice. he went on to say: he who makes it his object to overthrow vice, and to avenge religion, morality and social law upon their enemies, must unveil vice in all its naked hideousness and bring it before the eyes of mankind in colossal size; he must himself wander temporarily through its nocturnal labyrinths and must be able to force himself into states of feeling that revolt his soul by their unnaturalness. i may properly claim for my work, in view of its remarkable catastrophe, a place among moral books. vice meets the end that befits it. the wanderer returns to the track of law. virtue triumphs. whoever is fair enough to read me through and try to understand me, from him i may expect, not that he admire the poet, but that he respect the right-minded man. this attempt to recommend 'the robbers' as a text-book in morality has now a curious sound. it is a safe guess that the young attorney for the defence wrote with his tongue in his cheek and an eye on the censor. the first edition, which appeared in may, 1781, was styled a 'schauspiel' and bore the hippocratic motto: _quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quae ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat_. the author's name was not given and the work purported (fallaciously) to have been published at frankfurt and leipzig. the anonymity was not taken seriously, however, and the stuttgart medicus soon found himself a bit of a literary lion. he was pointed out on the street as the man who had written 'the robbers', and distinguished travellers began to call upon him. the reviewers mingled praise and blame, and the most thoughtful of them, one timme, declared in the erfurt _zeitung_ that here if anywhere was the coming shakspere,--which was a little wild from posterity's point of view, but not an unpleasant thing for a young author to read in a newspaper. luckily for schiller his work was not long left to make its way as 'mere literature'. among those to whom he had sent the sheets was a mannheim bookseller, named schwan, who had an eye for dramatic merit. before schwan had read many pages it came over him that here was a prize for the stage, and he hurried with it to baron dalberg, intendant of the mannheim theater. dalberg was easily convinced,--only the work would need to be radically revised. a complimentary letter was addressed to schiller, proposing a stage version of 'the robbers' and offering to bring out future plays that he might write. schiller was quite willing, notwithstanding his preface, and about the middle of august he addressed himself to his task. profiting by the suggestions of dalberg and the reviewers, he devoted six weeks to adding, subtracting, re-writing, and re-arranging,--a new masterpiece, he averred, would have cost him less labor. but dalberg was not yet satisfied; correspondence ensued about various points, schiller showing himself very tractable, and it was not until the close of the year that the stage version was finally ready. it was played on the 12th of january, 1782,--its author having stolen away from stuttgart to see the performance,--and scored an unheard-of success.[31] shortly afterwards the new version, in slightly modified form, was published by schwan under the name of a 'trauerspiel' by friedrich schiller. the changes made in the new version do not reflect the free play of schiller's dramatic instinct so much as his deferential attitude towards dalberg. thus we know that the most important of them all, the shifting of the action back into the age of expiring feudalism, was made reluctantly. schiller felt, and had reason to feel, that the modernity of his drama was its very life-blood;[32] for the squeamish dalberg, however, the robbers in the age of frederick the great were a painful anachronism. so they were put back three centuries and costumed in the style of the 'ritterstück'. other less dubious changes were also made. thus the long soliloquies of franz and the ribald garrulities of spiegelberg were reduced to more tolerable proportions. robber schwarz and pastor moser were omitted, and the bastard hermann was vitalized into a person of some account by means of his counter-plot against franz. the un-lyrical songs by which schiller had set great store were dropped, and the catastrophe was so changed as to bring the two brothers finally face to face. the life of schweizer was spared and franz, instead of being torn limb from limb, was derisively pardoned by his great-souled brother and then, amid mocking laughter, thrust into the selfsame dungeon in which he had confined his father. much against schiller's will amalia was made to kill herself with a dagger snatched from one of the outlaws, instead of receiving her death at the hands of her lover. the prodigious success of 'the robbers' upon the mannheim stage, and upon other stages where it was soon produced in more or less garbled form, made the work famous. famous and at the same time notorious. new editions, most of them pirated, began to appear, and a mania similar to the werther-mania of the previous decade spread over germany. the newspapers told of conspiring schoolboys whose heads had been turned toward a career of crime. a well-born youth who had essayed the rôle of robin hood near strassburg and was hanged there in october, 1783, confessed suspiciously that he had been brought to his fate by the reading of bad books. the sedate authorities of leipzig forbade the further performance of the play in their city because they had observed a sudden increase of burglary and petit larceny. an edition of 1782, which the publisher, possibly without schiller's knowledge, had adorned with a rampant lion and the motto _in tirannos_, probably added to the vogue of the piece as a revolutionary document. a french translation appeared in 1785 and drew the attention of the turbulent gauls to that 'monsieur gille', who was in time to receive the diploma of a french citizen. the first english translation dates from 1792. it is not difficult to imagine the emotions with which schiller, now at the fervid age of twenty-two, returned to his post after that intoxicating visit to mannheim, and, his ears still tingling with the thunderous plaudits of the theater and the complimentary babble of his new friends, resumed the dosing of his sick grenadiers in stuttgart. for a while things went on very much as before. in order to better his position in a professional way, he formed the plan of taking his doctor's degree and then qualifying for a professorship in physiology. but from the first the poet in him prevailed more and more over the medical man. soon after leaving the academy he had published a long elegy upon the death of a young friend named weckerlin. it is a rebellious, declamatory poem, in which the pathos of untimely death is made the occasion for ventilating radical views as to the goodness of god and the consolations of religion. passages like the following show the young schiller at his best as a poet: liebe wird dein auge nie vergolden, nie umhalsen deine braut wirst du, nie, wenn unsere thränen stromweis rollten, ewig, ewig, ewig sinkt dein auge zu.[33] for the rest, the death of weckerlin is a 'discord on the great lute', and a 'barbarous doom'. and yet, the poem continues, the dead youth has drawn the better lot; he will sleep calmly in his narrow house, unmindful of the wretched tragi-comedy going on above his head. so his friends are bidden 'to clap their hands and shout a loud _plaudite_'. as for a reunion, there will be one, but it will not be in the 'paradise of the rabble'.--in another poem dating from this period, 'the chariot of venus,' the love-goddess is put on trial and castigated for her sins. her havoc among the sons of men is described in half a hundred rhetorical stanzas which were evidently inspired by the genius of the clinic or the hospital, rather than by one of the sacred nine. besides these poems a large number of others were written by schiller during the year 1781, prior to the time when dalberg's invitation caused him to turn his attention to the stage. it was of course important to acquaint the public with his lucubrations, but poetry in large quantities was not an easily marketable commodity. the usual mode of publication was the poetic 'almanac' or 'calendar', in which a number of ambitious verse-makers would unite their wares in a single volume. of such almanacs there were several in germany and one at least in suabia. it was edited by one stäudlin, a rival whom schiller thought it would be both feasible and pleasant to outshine. so he sent out letters to his friends inviting contributions, and in due time there appeared, after a fresh outlay of borrowed money, an 'anthology for the year 1782'. it consisted of some four-score poems, signed with all manner of intentionally misleading symbols and purporting to emanate from tobolsko, in siberia. the most of the verses were the work of schiller.[34] among the poems of the 'anthology' there are none that have become very popular, none that are capable of affording any very keen delight to the lover of poetry. one sees that their author's lyric gift was not of the highest order. what is heard is not so much the note of honest feeling as the effort of an active intellect, searching heaven and earth for clever and striking things to say. instead of learning from the folk-song, schiller had learned originally from klopstock; and what he had learned was to pose and philosophize and invest fictitious sentiment with a maze of bewildering and far-fetched imagery. then he had lost sympathy with klopstock's religiosity, had acquired a better opinion of the things of sense, and had had his introduction to doubt and disgust and rebellion. when now these moods sought expression in verse, the verse took the form of impassioned rhetoric. he sang not as the bird sings, but as a fervid youth sings who is eager to assert as strongly as possible his emancipation from conventional modes of thought and feeling. the poems of the 'anthology' are too numerous and in the main too unimportant for an exhaustive review; it must suffice to glance at a few of the more noteworthy. several had been written at the academy and were now published with more or less of retouching. to this number, it would seem, belongs the one entitled 'the glory of creation', which is a perfectly serious and devout poem on the grandeur and beauty of the world. along with this, however, we find another, entitled 'to god', which tells of moods like those which had led werther to characterize nature as 'an eternally ruminating monster'. it consists of five unrimed stanzas, all but one ending with an emphatic 'thou big thing'. thou who didst summon earth and sky, and earth and sky came forth; who sayest the word and worlds arise, who art thou, mighty thing? o big, amazingly big thing! my head swims when i look; i shudder and start back afraid and fall--upon my knees. these verses--the translation may hold up its head quite unabashed beside the original--hardly rise above the plane of doggerel; they signify nothing except that their author has had his little quarrel with this best of all possible worlds and is not unwilling to shock people. of far greater poetic interest are the verses entitled 'rousseau', whose neglected grave (he died in 1778) is made the point of departure for a vigorous denunciation of the bigotry that had driven him from place to place and denied him peace among the living. the poem foresees a time when streams of blood shall flow for the honor of calling him son. there is no effort at portraiture, and no suggestion of any repellent or pitiable traits.[35] we get not byron's "self-torturing sophist", but a martyred sage who suffered and died at the hands of christians,--'he who makes out of christians human beings'. toward the end he is apostrophized as the 'great endurer, and bidden to leap joyously into charon's boat and go tell the spirits about this 'dream of the war of frogs and mice, the hand-organ doodle-doodle of this life'.[36] in this poem there is certainly no lack of that 'fire' which duke karl found in schiller's dissertation. indeed fire abounds everywhere in his youthful versifying. he never contemplates, never dwells upon a temperate emotion. the poetry of common things and of the gentler feelings seems to have been nonexistent for him. his imagination likes to occupy itself with the supernal, the stupendous, or else with the awful and the revolting. this is seen in the two poems 'elysium' and 'a group from tartarus'; the one aiming to portray a land of ineffable happiness, where sorrow has no name and the only pain is a gentle ecstasy, the other depicting the infinite misery of the inferno. in both there is a free blending of christian with pagan conceptions, 'elysium' being put for heaven and 'tartarus' for hell. a similar blending is noticeable in many of the other poems, ancient mythology being made to furnish forth the setting and the symbols of modern passion. so it is, for example, in the lyric operetta 'semele', the longest and most pretentious of the 'anthology' poems. it consists of two scenes in irregular verses, dealing with jupiter's love for the mortal semele' and juno's jealousy. artistically it is much in need of the file, and its sustained note of passionate pathos hardly comports, perhaps, with the type of the operetta. nevertheless it contains powerful passages and telling stage effects. one can see that the young student--'semele' appears to have been written at the academy--had learned, through, his occasional visits to the opera, how to manage a conventional theme and conventional machinery in such a way as to startle and thrill. more noteworthy, for the characterization of the youthful schiller, is the ode entitled 'friendship', which purports to be taken 'from the letters of julius to raphael, an unpublished novel'. in this poem we have not so much the expression of a real human affection as a philosophy of friendship; just as in the laura poems we have a philosophy of love. the verses remind one immediately of rousseau's saying that he was 'intoxicated with love without an object'. friendship is described as a mystic attraction of souls, identical with the attraction of gravitation. this it is which makes the beauty and the glory of the spiritual world. 'we are dead groups when we hate, gods when we love.' if in creation's all i stood alone, souls would i dream into the senseless stone and kiss them in a fond embrace. then we hear of a hierarchy of spirits, ascending 'from the mongol to the greek seer, who precedes the last of the seraphs'; and in this harmonious ring-dance of souls raphael and julius 'sweep onward to where time and space are submerged in the sea of eternal glory'. other poems which rise above the general level are 'the bad monarchs', a poetic castigation (without mention of names) of the type of ruler perfectly exemplified by duke karl of württemberg, up to about the year 1770; 'in a battle', a powerful description of the rage of combat, with all its sickening and inspiring details; 'the pestilence', a gruesome tribute to the power of god as manifested in the horrors of the plague, and 'count eberhard the quarreler', a patriotic battle-ballad in honor of a locally renowned suabian fighter. better than any of these, however, from a poetic point of view, is the 'funeral fantasy', which was occasioned by the death of young von hoven in 1780. one may perhaps doubt the genuineness of the grief that could find expression in such a pomp of words, but there is no doubting the poetic power of pictures like this: pale, at its ghastly noon, pauses above the death-still wood the moon; the night-sprite sighing, through the dim air stirs; the clouds descend in rain; mourning, the wan stars wane, flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! haggard as spectres, vision-like and dumb, dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow, towards that sad lair the pale procession come where the grave closes on the night below.[37] but the most famous and on the whole the most interesting of the effusions in the 'anthology' are the erotic verses addressed to laura. whether schiller was humanly in love with his landlady, frau luise vischer, is a rather futile question which german erudition has argued pro and con these many years without coming to an inexpugnable conclusion. probably he was not, though he may have thought that he was. if he had been we should have heard of it sooner or later in authentic prose. but she interested him as the first of her sex who had come under his close observation. there were on his part the small gallantries of daily life, and on hers the responsiveness of a not very prudish widow quite willing to be adored. she played the piano. it was enough: the needy petrarch had found a sufficient laura--and never was a poet's goddess worshiped in such singular strains. we miss in them altogether that captivating simplicity which the young goethe, and later the young heine, caught from the songs of the people. schiller is always in pursuit of the intense, the extraordinary, the ecstatic, and sometimes fails to impress through sheer superabundance of the impressive. his imagination wanders between a wild sensuality,--so lubricious in its suggestions, now and then, as to occasion gossip to the effect that he had become a libertine,--and a sublimated philosophy based on platonic conceptions of a prenatal existence, or upon leibnitzian conceptions of a pre-established harmony. but while the laura poems are sufficiently sensual, they are not sensuous; or if they try to be, the sensuous element is unreal and unimaginable. some of them, with their overstrained vehemence of expression, their fervid and far-fetched tropes, their involved and sometimes obscure diction, are little more than intellectual puzzles: they so occupy the mind in the mere effort of comprehension that little room is left for any emotion whatever. they leave one altogether cold. a 'fantasie to laura' identifies the rapturous passion with the force of gravitation which holds planets and systems in order. 'blot it out from the mechanism of nature and the all bursts asunder in fragments; your worlds thunder into chaos; weep, newtons, for their giant fall!' and then laura's kiss! aus den schranken schwellen alle sehnen, seine ufer überwallt das blut; körper will in körper überstürzen, lodern seelen in vereinter glut.[38] when laura plays the piano, her adorer stands there, one moment an exanimate statue, the next a disembodied spirit,--while the listening zephyrs murmur more softly in reverence. in a 'reproach to laura' she is taxed with being the ruin of her lover's ambition. because of her the 'giant has shriveled to a dwarf'. she has 'blown away the mountains', that he had 'rolled up' to the sunny heights of glory. in another poem, 'mystery of reminiscence', we hear of a cosmic golden age in which laura, one with her poet, was a part of the godhead. one and yet two, they swept through space in unimaginable ecstasy. somehow,--the point is not made very clear,--there came a great cataclysm and separated them. now they are beautiful fragments of the god, evermore yearning to restore the lost unity: darum laura dieses wutverlangen, ewig starr an deinen mund zu hangen, und die wollust deinen hauch zu trinken, in dein wesen, wenn sich blicke winken, sterbend zu versinken.[39] without lingering longer over the erotic poems of the 'anthology', one may say that they are characterized, like 'the robbers', by a fiery intensity of expression which, in the search after the sublime, occasionally passes the bounds of good taste. their author already has at his command a gorgeous poetic diction that is all his own. one is often amazed at his mere command of words, the audacity of his tropes, the sweep of his imagination. but he does not convince. when at his best he only produces an impression of magnificent feigning. the reader soon sees that, notwithstanding all the impassioned hyperboles, it is really intellectual poetry,--a youth philosophizing about his passion. and the philosophy is little more than a matter of fine-sounding but vacuous analogies that have no root in the facts of experience.[40] and so the poetry does not take hold of one. nor does it charm with its music; there is vigor and sweep and swing, but the subtler elements of melodious verse are lacking. these qualities of the youthful schiller's poetry foretell that he will never be a great lyrist, but they promise well enough for the poetic tale. this promise is seen notably in the poem called 'the infanticide'. it is a gruesome thing, with the pathos here and there overstrained, but what a power of vivid narration! what a gift for the portraiture of frenzied passion! for the rest, it should not go unrecorded that certain poems of the 'anthology' went altogether too far in the defiance of conventional morality. the study of medicine, combined with the ardor of youthful revolt and the seductions of a new bohemian life, had so sensualized the mind of schiller that, for a brief period in his career, he found pleasure in exploiting the indecent. it was but a passing phase, and not very bad at its worst. still, if heine, and the other emancipators of the flesh who came later, had felt the need of supporting their cause by an appeal to distinguished authority, they might have referred quite unabashed to the youthful sins of the idealist schiller. little notice was taken of the 'anthology' even in suabia, and none at all, apparently, in the outside german world. the investment brought no immediate returns in fame or in money, and other experiments of a different character turned out but little better. as early as the spring of 1781 schiller had assumed the editorial charge of a would-be popular magazine intended to contribute to the 'benefit and pleasure' of the suabians. it was a weak provincial affair that soon died of inanition. the hack-work that schiller did for it is of no biographical interest, save that it brought him into connection with suabian writers and suggested to him that with a freer hand he might produce a better journal. in the following year, accordingly, we find him starting, in conjunction with his friends abel and petersen, the _wirtemberg repertory of literature_. it was to be a quarterly, and bore the ominous legend: 'at the expense of the editors'. to this journal schiller contributed various essays and reviews which show that as a critic he had been influenced by lessing, but had not acquired the knack of lessing's luminous and straightforward style. in a rather badly written paper on 'the present condition of the german theater', he takes up a question which was destined to interest him later,--that of the relation of the drama to morality. he has no difficulty in showing that people are not deterred from the vices or impelled to the virtues that they see represented on the stage. but by far the most important of these contributions to the _repertory_ are two reviews (of course anonymous) of his own writings. in a long notice of 'the robbers' he discusses the work with a coolness that is simply amazing. his own child has become a _corpus vile_ that he has the nerve to dissect without the slightest tremor of parental sympathy. nearly everything that a century's criticism has found to urge against the play,--the dubiousness of the entire invention, the impossibility of such a devil as franz, the insipidity of amalia and the old count moor, the faults of the diction and the barbarism of the action,--is here set forth with remorseless severity. the review closes with the facetious comment which appears at the head of this chapter. not quite so caustic is the notice of the 'anthology', but it contains a significant 'admonition to our young poets' to the effect that 'extravagance is not strength, that violation of the rules of taste and propriety is not boldness and originality, that fancy is not feeling, and high-flown rhetoric is not the talisman on which the arrows of criticism break and recoil'. verily it is not given every young author to see himself thus clearly in the glass of criticism. we may guess, however, that these critical mystifications were not altogether free from the element of calculating humbug. schiller knew full well that to be castigated in public would not be a bad thing for his budding reputation; and so, as no one else came forward to do the slashing, he did it himself. it is amusing to read that a frankfurt correspondent was so pained by the review of 'the robbers' that he sent in a defence of the piece and was greatly surprised to learn that reviewer and author were one and the same person. these contributions to the _repertory_ appeared in the first two numbers; before the third came out schiller had turned his back for good and all upon his native württemberg. ever since that first visit to mannheim he had felt drawn to the 'greek climate of the palatinate'. on the 1st of april, 1782, we find him writing to dalberg that it 'would be untrue were he to deny his growing inclination for the drama'. the letter goes on to say that he was then expecting to be very much occupied, for several months, with medical studies; but he hoped to finish a new play, 'fiesco', by the end of the year. toward the end of may, taking advantage of the absence of the duke, he visited mannheim again and saw a second representation of 'the robbers'. through the indiscreet gossip of the friends who accompanied him, the duke got wind of this unauthorized journey, ordered 'the deserter' under arrest for two weeks, and forbade him all further intercourse with foreign parts. schiller made use of his enforced leisure to work upon 'fiesco', and to plan a third drama, 'louise miller', which promised a chance of revenge upon the petty tyrant who sought to own him body and soul. after serving his time in the guard-house he wrote an urgent appeal to dalberg, to rescue him from his intolerable situation by giving him employment at mannheim. but dalberg, a fearsome and politic creature, had no mind to compromise himself by befriending a youth who had quarreled with the powerful duke of württemberg. schiller now began to think of running away, and his thoughts were soon quickened into resolution by fresh exasperations. in the second act of 'the robbers' he had made spiegelberg refer to the swiss canton of the grisons as the 'athens of modern scalawags.' tradition has it that the passage was a thrust at an unpopular swiss overseer in the academy. it is probable, however, that it was in no way malicious, but merely a thoughtless jest at the expense of a canton which had actually got a bad reputation for lax enforcement of the law. be this as it may, the passage gave offence to a patriotic swiss named amstein, who aired his grievance in print and demanded a retraction. when schiller paid no attention to this, amstein appealed to one walter, a fussy official living at ludwigsburg. walter took up the case of the traduced canton with great zeal, and brought it to the attention of the duke. the result was a summons to schiller, a sharp reproof, and an order to write no more 'comedies'. he was to confine himself strictly to medicine or he would be cashiered. matters now came swiftly to a head. on september 1, 1782, schiller addressed to his sovereign a very humble letter of remonstrance, setting forth that his authorship had added more than five hundred florins to his income,[41] and that this money was absolutely necessary for the prosecution of his studies; that he was winning reputation and thus bringing honor to the academy and to its illustrious founder, and so forth. the duke's reply was to threaten him with arrest in case he should write any more letters upon this subject. schiller now resolved to take his fate in his own hands. resistance and submission to the autocrat were alike out of the question; the only recourse was flight from württemberg. in the days of german absolutism, this was a dangerous step to take. technically he would be a deserter. he had reason to fear that he would not be allowed to make his way in the world by his own merit, unharmed and unhelped, but would be dogged by the malice of a despot and perhaps brought back to undergo the fate of schubart. worse still was the possibility that his father might be made to suffer from the duke's anger. nevertheless he resolved to take the risk. he made known his purpose to a very few friends, one of whom, frau von wolzogen, offered him her house in bauerbach, in the event of his sometime needing a quiet refuge. another friend, andreas streicher, nobly offered to share his fortunes, streicher, to whom we owe a classical account of this episode in schiller's life, was a young musician living with his mother in stuttgart. it had been planned that he should visit hamburg in the near future, but he now persuaded his mother to advance him the money that was to have been devoted to his journey, in order that he might accompany his beloved schiller into exile. so the friends bided their time and meanwhile 'fiesco' made rapid progress. the wished-for opportunity came on the 22nd of september. the court was in a flutter over the visit of a russian prince for whose reception great preparations had been made. in the general excitement schiller counted upon getting away unobserved. so he bade a tearful farewell to his mother and sisters, who knew of the secret that had been kept away from the father for reasons of policy, and in the evening he drove out of stuttgart with his friend streicher, giving to the guard the names of dr. ritter and dr. wolf. the friends set their faces northward towards mannheim. as they passed the brilliantly illuminated castle solitude, so streicher relates, schiller fell into a long revery. at last the exclamation 'my mother!' told the tale of his thoughts. but the mood of sadness did not last long. cheerful talk enlivened the journey, and when the two travellers crossed the boundary of the palatinate schiller was jubilant. he felt that he had entered a land of freedom and enlightenment, where art was esteemed and talent honored. he had with him, virtually complete, the manuscript of the new play upon which he had built illusory hopes. it will be in order to consider 'fiesco' before we follow its author into the vicissitudes of his exile. footnotes: [footnote 30: the somewhat conflicting data are subjected to a critical scrutiny by weltrich, i, 323 ff.] [footnote 31: bulthaupt, i, 210, quotes from pichler's history of the mannheim theater the following account by an eye-witness; 'the theater was like a mad-house,--rolling eyes, clenched fists, stamping feet and hoarse shrieks from the spectators. strangers fell sobbing into each other's arms, and women staggered to the door at the point of fainting. there was a general dissolution, as in chaos, from the mists of which a new creation bursts forth.' this description is perhaps the best possible antidote to matthew arnold's fastidious observation that 'the robbers' is violent and tiresome.] [footnote 32: in a letter of dec. 12, 1781, to dalberg, he admits the cogency of the objection to his horde of robbers 'in our enlightened century' and virtually expresses regret that he had not himself, from the beginning, imagined an earlier date for the action. but he fears that to change the time, now that the piece is finished, will result in making it a monstrosity, a 'crow with peacock's feathers'.] [footnote 33: "love gilds not for thee all the world with its glow, never bride in the clasp of thine arms shall repose; thou canst see not our tears, though in torrents they flow. those eyes in the calm of eternity close." --_bulwer's translation_.] [footnote 34: as different poems undoubtedly schiller's were variously signed, and as many of his youthful effusions were excluded by him from the collection of 1801, the sifting out of his share in the 'anthology' and the ascription of the remaining poems to their proper authors are tasks of no small difficulty. the critical student should consult weltrich, i, 501 ff.] [footnote 35: schiller seems to have got his idea of rousseau chiefly from h.p. sturz's "denkwürdigkeiten von johann jakob rousseau" (1779). the famous 'confessions' did not begin to appear until 1781. curiously enough our poem refers to rousseau as 'suckled on the banks of the seine', and as having 'stood like a meteor on the banks of the garonne'.] [footnote 36: geh, du opfer dieses trillingsdrachen, hüpfe freudig in den todesnachen, grosser dulder, frank und frei! geh, erzähl' dort in der geister kreise diesen traum vom krieg der frösch' und mäuse, dieses lebens jahrmarktsdudelei.] [footnote 37: bulwer's translation, which is here particularly good.] [footnote 38: "out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense, the veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow; body to body rapt--and, charmèd thence, soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow." --_bulwer's translation_.] [footnote 39: "and therefore came to me the wish to woo thee- still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee; _this_ made thy glances to my soul the link- _this_ made me burn thy very breath to drink- my life in thine to sink." --_bulwer's translation, _] [footnote 40: concerning the provenience and the philosophic connection of the youthful schiller's ideas of love and friendship the reader will do well to consult kuno fischer, "schiller-schriften", i, 41 ff.] [footnote 41: of course this roseate statement to his highness took no account of his debts, which had not yet begun to be particularly pressing.] chapter iv the conspiracy of fiesco at genoa ein diadem erkämpfen ist grosz; es wegwerfen ist göttlich. _'fiesco'_. as we have seen, 'fiesco' was written during the summer and fall of 1782. the following winter, having been rejected by the mannheim stage, it was published as a literary drama. this first edition bore the sub-title: 'a republican tragedy.' there is a very general agreement that 'fiesco' is upon the whole the weakest of schiller's plays. as a 'republican tragedy' it is a disappointment, since its political import, though obvious enough to one acquainted with schiller from other sources, is not brought out distinctly in the play itself. neither the friend nor the enemy of republicanism, in any historical or human sense of the word, can derive the slightest edification from 'fiesco,' the political talk is vague and unpractical, and we get no clear idea of the contending forces. when the curtain goes down upon the chaos of intrigue, one is at a loss to know how one is expected to feel. and yet the play is full of powerful scenes, developed with masterly dramatic skill. as a mere spectacle it rivals 'the robbers', to which as a drama it is decidedly inferior. in general its defects strike the reader more than the spectator. it is not the hand of the dramatist but the eye of the historian that is lacking. in other words the author, with all his seeming profundity of philosophic reflection, was simply not ripe for historical tragedy. the bare facts of fiesco's conspiracy, related with as little ascription of motive as possible, are these: in the year 1528 andrea doria, who had won great distinction as an admiral in the french service, but had now quarreled with the king of france and hoisted the colors of emperor charles the fifth, landed an expedition in genoa and captured the city from the french. historians agree that he could easily have made himself sovereign, but instead of doing so he restored the old aristocratic republic, thus winning for himself the enduring title of 'father and liberator of his country.' although doria was simply an influential citizen of genoa and enjoyed the general esteem of his countrymen, his prominence in the state gave rise to animosities among the noble families, and these were increased when he made his young and headstrong kinsman, gianettino, his heir. in the year 1547 the malcontents found a leader in the person of giovanni ludovigi fiesco, count of lavagna. fiesco was young, handsome, rich and ambitious--a dashing and unscrupulous cavalier. his first thought was to restore the french domination and make himself only a viceroy of the french king; but a fellow conspirator, verrina, persuaded him to seize for himself the sovereign power to which his rank and talents entitled him. the conspiracy was carefully matured, fiesco meanwhile, to divert suspicion, acting the part of a giddy spendthrift and man of fashion. on the night of january 2, 1547, the conspirators made their attack upon the city. gianettino doria was killed, but the aged andrea made his escape. the success of fiesco appeared to be complete, but as he was going on board a galley the gang-plank turned, he fell into the sea and his heavy armor bore him down. without a leader the conspiracy instantly collapsed. on the following day andrea returned and the genoese republic went on as before, it was a hint from rousseau that suggested to schiller, during his last year in the academy, the idea of dramatizing this episode of genoese history. in the german 'memoirs of rousseau' by h.p. sturz, referred to in the preceding chapter, he found rousseau quoted as follows: the reason why plutarch wrote such noble biographies is that he never selected half-great men, such as exist by the thousands in quiet states, but grand exemplars of virtue or sublime criminals. in modern history there is a man deserving of his brush, and that is count fiesco, whose training made him the very man to liberate his country from the rule of the dorias.... there was no other thought in his soul than to dethrone the usurper.[42] here was a tempting theme for a young dramatist who had fed his own soul upon plutarch, was enamored of 'greatness' in whatever form, and had already tried his hand upon a 'sublime criminal.' what could be better for his purpose than a daring conspiracy, led by a plutarchian hero who was at the same time a single-minded patriot? in his earliest musings it is probable that schiller accepted rousseau's view of fiesco at its face value, and when he began to consult the historians he found at first some support for his preconception. among his sources was the 'conjuration du comte de fiesque', by de retz; a book which was written, according to a somewhat doubtful tradition, when its author was but eighteen years old, and which, by its clever perversion of history and its subtle insinuation of revolutionary ideas, is said to have drawn from richelieu the comment: 'there is a dangerous man!'[43] in the sophisticated narrative of de retz fiesco appears as a modern brutus, whose thought of personal aggrandizement was altogether subordinate to the thought of his country's welfare. he is made much better than he really was, and the two dorias much worse. further study of the subject, however, soon opened the eyes of schiller to the other side of the question; for in robertson's 'charles the fifth' he found fiesco portrayed as an ambitious revolutionist who sought to overthrow the dorias only in order that he might make himself the master of genoa--in short as a catiline instead of a brutus. the dramatic problem then turned from the first upon the character of fiesco. in the 'dramaturgic' of lessing the doctrine had been proclaimed that the dramatist is not bound by the so-called facts of history; that he may deal with them as suits his artistic purpose. but what was the purpose to be in this case? should it be a tragedy of austere patriotism going down against a relatively bad order too strong to be resisted, or a tragedy of corrupt ambition dashing itself to death against a relatively good order too strong to be overthrown? either conception, if consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a good historical tragedy. what schiller did, however, was to vacillate between the two, to blend them in a confusing way, and finally to let the interest of his play turn largely upon the hero's mental struggle between selfish ambition and unselfish patriotism. the catiline conception required an avenger of genoa, for it was evident[44] that the accidental drowning of fiesco in the moment of his triumph would never do in a play. it was necessary that his death appear as a punishment, a nemesis. so for the role of avenger schiller invented a stern patriot to whom, without historical warrant, he gave the name of verrina. verrina is the real brutus. to furnish the conspirators with a definite grievance gianettino was made to violate the helpless bertha, who was then provided with an avenger in the person of the young bourgognino. leonora, the wife of fiesco, is historical. robertson relates that on the night of the uprising fiesco went to take leave of his wife, "whom he loved with tender affection." he found her "in all the anguish of uncertainty and fear"; and her terror was increased when she learned what was on foot. she endeavored by her tears and entreaties and her despair to divert him from his purpose. but in vain; he left her with the exclamation: "farewell! you shall either never see me more, or you shall behold to-morrow everything in genoa subject to your power." on the other hand, the intrigue of fiesco and julia, the sister of gianettino, is unhistorical. it was invented by schiller as a part of the general scheme of duplicity and frivolity by which fiesco should seek to quiet the suspicion of the dorias. if this particular invention was upon the whole unfortunate--the matter will be discussed further on,--the same cannot be said of the moor hassan, who becomes fiesco's factotum and ends his career on the gallows. the rascally moor is the most picturesque figure and the most telling role in the whole piece. schiller introduces fiesco as a seemingly frivolous _roué_, flirting desperately with the countess julia, to the great torment of his wife leonora. we soon see, however, that the frivolity is only a mask: he has a serious purpose and that purpose is to make himself master of genoa. at first, indeed, he toys with the idea of a nobler fame. in a soliloquy at the end of the second act he exclaims: 'to conquer a diadem is grand; to throw it away is divine. down, tyrant! let genoa be free and me be its happiest citizen!' but this mood does not long withstand the intoxication of power. to rule, to rule alone, to feel that genoa owes everything to him only,--this soon becomes his all-absorbing ambition. at the last, when the revolution has succeeded, he puts on the ducal purple and the people are ready to acquiesce in the new régime. but old verrina is not so tractable. when he cannot prevail upon fiesco to doff the hateful insignia, he pushes him into the sea and exclaims in disgust: 'i am going to andrea!' such a scheme, it is evident, does not provide for a 'republican tragedy', except in a very loose sense. if we had a republican idealist pitting his strength against a tyrant and going down in the battle, either because of his adversary's superior strength or because of some weakness in his own character, that would be a tragedy of republicanism. in schiller's play, however, the conflict is not of that character. at heart fiesco is never a republican, though he sometimes takes his mouth full of fine republican phrases. his mainspring of action is not the welfare of genoa, but his own aggrandizement. old andrea, whose power he plots to overthrow and whose magnanimity puts him to shame, is actually a better man than he. if he has a measure of our sympathy in his feud with the younger doria, that is only because gianettino is portrayed as a vulgar brute deserving of nothing but the gallows. politically there is little to choose between the two, so long as we regard virtue as consisting in an unselfish devotion to an ideal of republican liberty. the character of fiesco being what it is, his final catastrophe produces no very clear impression. one does not see precisely what bearing it is to have on the political fortunes of genoa. at first blush the conclusion seems to mean that the state has been saved from the clutches of a tyrant who was about to subvert its liberties. but if we look at the matter in that light we have a tragedy, not of republicanism, but of the "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other." with the usurper fiesco, and the brute gianettino, out of the way, the state returns to the good regimen of andrea, who represents the only republicanism then thinkable, democracy in the modern sense being nowhere in question. but it is doubtful whether schiller intends fiesco to be thus reprobated. the hot-blooded italian has certain traits that win sympathy; and even his consuming ambition is so invested with a glamour of romantic enthusiasm that it is difficult to reckon him among the dangerous tyrants. if he is false to his better nature, we at any rate see that he has a better nature. one is thus tempted to regard verrina's act as that of a madman who cares more for form than for substance and sees danger where there is none. for verrina, who plays the part of brutus to his country's caesar and seems to represent the sternest type of republican virtue, is a repulsive fanatic. the horrible curse that he pronounces upon his daughter when he hears that she has been outraged is significant at once for his character and for the young schiller's notion of tragic pathos. throwing a black veil over her head he vociferates thus: be blind! accursed be the air that fans your cheek! accursed be the sleep that refreshes you! accursed be every human trace that is welcome to your misery! go down into the deepest dungeon of my house! moan! howl! drag out the time with your woe. let your life be the slimy writhing of the dying worm,--the obstinate, crushing struggle between being and not-being. and this curse shall rest upon you until gianettino has gasped out his last breath. after this it is difficult to look up to verrina as a competent savior of society, however much one may sympathize with him in his private feud. his cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct ridiculous. it seems to say that he has been participating in a tragic farce which is now ended. one might almost get the impression that the whole play is only a satire upon republican clap-trap. satire, however, was very far from schiller's thoughts. his enthusiasm for liberty was much too genuine to permit any trifling with the sacred theme. there is no doubt that he began 'fiesco' supposing that it would prove a convenient setting for those inspiring ideas of liberty which he had absorbed from the reading of ancient history and of modern revolutionary literature. they were vague and tumultuous ideas, which had very little relation to a definite theory of government, but he was very much in earnest with them, especially after his rasping experience with the duke of württemberg. no one can mistake the autobiographic note in the speech of bourgognino which closes the first act: 'i have long felt in my breast something that would not be satisfied. now of a sudden i know what it was. (springing up heroically) i have a tyrant.' but the young dramatist had not proceeded far before he discovered that his ideal requirement was out of tune with the facts. to represent fiesco as a would-be liberator of his country was impossible without a violent perversion of history for which he was not prepared. out of deference to history he was led to abase his hero into something like a catilinarian conspirator. but he could not give up the idea of a republican tragedy; so he tried to save it by depicting his hero as a man who had it in him to become a noble liberator, but is corrupted by the dazzling lures of power and so led on to ruin. there are those who regard fiesco's inconsistency as an artistic complexity of motive going to show that schiller had progressed in the knowledge of life and become aware that human heroism is apt to be more or less mixed with base alloy. one writer[45] thinks it shows "how intelligently he had studied the italian renaissance and how correctly he had grasped its spirit." but this is to give him a credit that he does not fully deserve. the simple truth is that 'fiesco' was written very hastily and that its author had spent precious little time in studying the italian renaissance, though it must be admitted that he possessed a remarkable gift for visualizing the little that he had read. complexity of motive is all very well,--very human and very italian; but the difficulty is that in this case it is not properly subordinated to a luminous dramatic idea. when a man's motives become so complex and contradictory that one does not know how to take him, he ceases to be available for the higher purposes of tragedy. that 'fiesco' produces this bewildering effect is due to the fact that the inner logic of the piece had not been fully and consistently thought out when the writing began. and this is not all. the author seems unable to control and guide the unruly spirits whom he has conjured into life. there is no lucid grouping of historical forces. france, germany and the pope stand dimly in the background like mechanical puppets, and we never learn what they severally represent in relation to genoese politics, gianettino pulls a string and has a sanction for the wholesale murder of his countrymen. fiesco pulls another string and gets men and galleys ad libitum. we do not see an intelligible clash of great political ideas, but a wild mêlée, in the outcome of which we have no reason to be particularly interested. it is all as little tragic as a back-country vendetta, or a factional fight in the halls of a modern parliament. how loosely the play is articulated, and how little of logical compulsion there is in the catastrophe, is shown with fatal clearness by schiller's procedure in revising his work for the mannheim stage. by a few strokes of the pen at the end he changed its entire character. in the original draft his vacillating mind had leaned more and more decisively towards the catilinarian conception of his hero, and the book-version of 1783 was accordingly supplied with a motto from sallust's 'catiline.' the sentence runs: _nam id facinus imprimis ego memorabile existimo, sceleris atque periculi novitate._ so the conspiracy was to be a _facinus_ and a _scelus_, and the hero, of course, another 'exalted criminal' in the style of karl moor. in the stage version we observe that the motto from sallust has been dropped, and that while the title of 'tragedy' (_trauerspiel_) is retained, the adjective 'republican' is omitted. furthermore, without any radical revision of the preceding portraiture taken as a whole, a non-tragical conclusion has been substituted for the final catastrophe. fiesco, hard pressed by the strenuous verrina, declares that his heart has been right all along; only he was resolved that genoa's freedom should be his work and his alone. so he breaks his scepter, concludes an eternal friendship with the amazed verrina, and bids the people embrace their 'happiest fellow-citizen.' thus the original version, which had called itself a republican tragedy and was a tragedy without being republican, became a play which is truly republican without being called so, but is no longer a tragedy. this singular _volte-face_ on the part of our dramatist has of course been the subject of infinite discussion. the most of the critics appear to regard it as a mistake, to say the least. one of them, bellermann,[46] surmises that schiller made the change against his will to meet the views of dalberg. but of this there is no clear proof; and surely we cannot suppose that schiller would have consented even reluctantly to a change which he himself felt to be utterly absurd because a complete stultification of the preceding plot. he must have felt that the new ending was artistically at least possible. and so it is. it is with 'fiesco' somewhat as with the bible: the conclusion that one reaches must depend upon the particular texts that one selects for emphasis. if we accent certain passages and pass lightly over others, we get the impression that it is a tragedy of selfish ambition doomed to disaster. if we accent a different set of passages, we are sure that it is a drama of republican idealism, sorely tempted by autocratic ambition, but destined to triumph finally over the baser motive. in the one view verrina is a virtuous patriot; in the other he is a mad fanatic who does not understand the greatness of his chief. after fiesco declares in soliloquy,--when a dramatic character is supposed to speak his real sentiments if anywhere,--that it is far nobler to renounce a diadem than to win it, we are certainly justified in expecting that he will seek the higher glory for himself. thus either ending is possible, and which is the better is mainly a question of stage effect. neither is historical, and neither gives a republican tragedy. it would be pedantic indeed to have devoted so many words to a mere matter of name. if a drama is good it signifies but little what we call it, or whether its title be exactly appropriate. in this case, however, we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. a play may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'fiesco', such as it has, does not lie in the intellectual organization of the whole. the mind of schiller, but little trained hitherto upon historical studies, had not yet learned how to extract a clear poetic essence from a confused medley of recorded facts and opinions. nature had endowed him with a vivid imagination for details, but study had not yet fitted him to exercise in a large and luminous way the sovereignty of the artist. his facts confused him and pulled him this way and that. and so we miss in 'fiesco' that 'monumental fresco-painting', as it has been called, which constitutes the charm of his riper historical dramas. but average play-goers are wont to bother their heads but little over these questions of higher artistic import which are apt to bulk so large before the mind of the literary critic. there are hundreds of literary dramas that are impossible or deadly dull upon the stage; and conversely dramatic talent will often make an interesting play out of a succession of scenes that lead the philosophic mind no whither. if 'fiesco' remains a fairly good stage-play, it is because the interest turns not upon its ultimate import, but upon its elaborate intrigue, its exciting situations and its general picturesqueness. the intrigue carries one along by its very audacity, notwithstanding that in the light of reason much of it appears rather absurd. thus we wonder how a mere brute like gianettino can have become such a power in the state right under the eyes of the wise and good andrea, who is subject to no illusions with regard to him. no objection can be made to fiesco's mask of gayety and cynicism in the first two acts, for that is historical. but was it necessary for him to deceive and torture the wife to whom in the end he appears loyally devoted? in any case it is clear that the exposition should have hinted somehow at the true condition of affairs, for it is a good old rule that while the people on the stage may disguise themselves and befool one another as they will, the audience must be kept posted. as it is, there is no suggestion of make-believe in fiesco's courting of julia. when he exclaims in soliloquy that she loves him and he 'envies no god', one is justified in assuming that chivalrous devotion to his wife is not among his virtues. it is to be supposed, apparently, that he makes love to julia in order to be seen of men; but as a matter of fact nothing comes of his flirtation except the torture of his wife. no one is deceived whom it was important for him to deceive, and the whole incident serves only to put his character in a dubious light. is this what schiller intended? did he feel that his hot-blooded italian should not be made too much of an idealist in his relation to women? did he wish it to be understood that fiesco is honestly infatuated with the voluptuous julia until he learns of her attempt to poison his wife? these are queries to which the play gives no very clear answer. so far as the conspiracy is concerned the whole affair with julia is rather badly motivated. still more dubious, from a rational point of view, is fiesco's relation to the moor. that a man having large political designs requiring secrecy and fidelity should, on the spur of the moment, choose as his confidential agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him, is, to say the least, a little improbable. here schiller was evidently trying to shaksperize again; trying, that is, to assert the poet's sovereign lordship over the petty bonds of philistine logic. the moor's frank exposition of the professional ethics of rascality, the dash with which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become on the stage the most popular figure in the piece; but that fiesco should be willing to trust himself and his cause to such a scamp, and that such remarkable results should be achieved by the black man's kaleidoscopic activity, brings into the play an element of buffoonery that injures it on the serious side. the daring play of master and man excites a certain interest in their game, but it is impossible to care very much who wins. from a dramaturgic point of view, however, the moor is a very useful invention, since fiesco is thereby enabled to direct the whole conspiracy from his palace, and at the same time, in the person of his lieutenant, to be in every part of the city. thus the action is concentrated and changes of scene are avoided. as a portrayer of female character the author of 'fiesco' has clearly made some progress since his first lame attempt in 'the robbers', but the improvement is by no means dazzling. both leonora and julia are singular creatures, and their unaccountableness is not of the right feminine kind that offers an attractive rôle to a good actress. why should the countess fiesco, herself an aristocrat and a woman with heroic blood in her veins, submit so meekly in her own house to the coarse effrontery of the woman who has wronged her? we get the impression that she is only a crushed flower,--a helpless, wan-cheeked thing, with nothing womanly about her except her jealousy. and then, at the end, she suddenly develops into a heroine. and what a strange heroine! no one will chide her for resorting on the fatal night to the protection of male attire,--a good enough shaksperian device,--but how remarkable that a woman wandering crazily in the dark, and already sufficiently disguised, should borrow a tell-tale cloak and a worse than useless sword from a corpse that she happens to stumble upon! no wonder that schiller in revising for the stage decided to let leonora live rather than provide for her death by such a stagy _tour de force_. in the stage version, however, she does not reappear after the parting scene, and so we are left to wonder why she was introduced at all. in madame julia we have a type of woman who was meant to be repulsive, and so far forth the young artist must be admitted to have wrought successfully. she is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical expression.' that such a woman should befool fiesco and rejoice in her triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. that she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself away in a voluptuous frenzy hardly comports with the type. nor is there anything in the inventory of her qualities that prepares us for her sudden assumption of the role of poisoner, when she is already, as she must suppose, the mistress of the situation. in her altercation with leonora in the second scene of act ii she uses a number of coarse expressions befitting a woman of vulgar birth,--wherein some of the critics see an evidence of schiller's unfamiliarity with the ways of refined ladies. it is quite possible, however, that we have to do instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the essential vulgarity of her character. at any rate it is interesting to know that the scene was offensive to schiller himself. he worked upon it with repugnance and was glad to be able to omit it entirely from the stage version.[47] in respect of its diction 'fiesco' is in no way essentially different from 'the robbers', albeit some have imagined that a faint improvement is discernible. there is the same tearing of passion to tatters, the same predilection for florid rhetoric in the sentimental passages, and for frenzied talk and action in passages of more violent emotion. when fiesco discovers that he has killed his wife, he first thrashes about him furiously with his sword. then he gnashes his teeth at god in heaven and expresses himself thus: 'if i only had his universe between my teeth, i feel in a mood to tear all nature into a grinning monster having the semblance of my pain.' in his final expostulation with the would-be tyrant, verrina delivers himself of this sentence: 'had i too been such an honest dolt as not to recognize the rogue in you, fiesco, by all the horrors of eternity, i would twist a cord out of my own intestines and throttle you with it, so that my fleeing soul should bespatter you with yeasty foam-bubbles.' no wonder that critics and actors alike were offended by such insanity of rant and that schiller himself soon saw the folly of it. he had got the idea that when a man is figuratively 'beside himself', the most effective way to portray his state of feeling is to make him talk and act like a veritable madman. he had yet to learn the profound wisdom, for poets as well as actors, of hamlet's rule to "acquire and beget, in the whirlwind of passion, a temperance that may give it smoothness." footnotes: [footnote 42: schiller refers to the quoted passage in his review of 'the robbers', schriften, ii, 357. it has not been found in rousseau's writings. sturz drew from unpublished sources.] [footnote 43: on the character of de retz's work, and its relation to the original of mascardi, consult the notes and introduction by chantelauze in vol. v of the 'grands ecrivains' edition of de retz, p. 473 ff.] [footnote 44: it was evident, that is, to schiller. in the dedication of 'fiesco' to professor abel he wrote; "die wahre katastrophe des komplotts, worin der graf durch einen unglücklichen zufall am ziel seiner wünsche zu grunde geht, muszte durchaus verändert werden, denn die natur des dramas duldet den finger des ungefährs oder der unmittelbaren vorsehung nicht."] [footnote 45: h. h. boyesen, in his biography of schiller, chapter iii.] [footnote 46: "schillers dramen," berlin, 1898, i, iii ff. bellermann, who defends through thick and thin the unity and consistency of the original 'fiesco', thinks that it is from first to last a tragedy of vaulting ambition,--not a political play at all, but a character play,--and that no other idea ever entered schiller's mind. but his argument is anything but convincing and he carefully refrains from all discussion of the tell-tale phrase, 'a republican tragedy'.] [footnote 47: this appears from a letter of sept. 29, 1783, to dalberg.] chapter v the fugitive in hiding ich kann nicht fürstendiener sein.--_'don carlos'_. when schiller arrived at mannheim, in the latter part of september, 1782, he was soon made aware that he had reckoned badly on the 'greek climate of the palatinate'. the friends to whom he showed himself were shocked at the audacity of his conduct; they could only advise him to conciliate the duke of württemberg and meanwhile to keep out of sight. so he wrote another very humble letter to his sovereign, explaining the desperate circumstances that had led to his flight and offering to return on condition of being allowed to continue his authorship. this letter he sent to his general, augé, asking his mediation. in due time augé replied, advising him to return, as the duke was 'graciously minded.' but this was not enough; schiller knew his man too well and had probably never expected that his appeal would have any other effect than possibly to mollify the duke a little and thus avert trouble for captain schiller. the fugitive had fixed all his hopes on the production of 'fiesco' at the mannheim theater. the manager, meyer, was well disposed toward him, and it was soon arranged that schiller should read his new play to a company of actors. the reading turned out a dismal failure. one by one the distressed auditors withdrew, wondering if what they heard was really the work of the same man who had written 'the robbers'. the next day meyer looked over the manuscript by himself and saw that it was not so bad after all; it had merely been murdered in the reading by its author's bad voice and extravagant declamation. but the decision did not rest with the friendly meyer; it rested with dalberg, who was just then away from home. meanwhile, as reports came from stuttgart to the effect that schiller's disappearance had caused a great sensation and that there was talk of pursuit, or of a possible demand for his extradition, the two friends thought it best not to remain in mannheim. schiller did not actually believe that the duke would pursue him, but there was no telling; it was best to be on the safe side. accordingly 'dr. ritter' and 'dr. wolf' set out for frankfurt. from there schiller addressed a pathetic letter to dalberg, setting forth that he was in great distress and asking for an advance of money against the first performance of 'fiesco'. but the cautious dalberg, who had just been in stuttgart, replied coolly that 'fiesco' was unsuited to the stage and would need to be radically revised. so the luckless author, having no other recourse, returned to the village of oggersheim, in the vicinity of mannheim, and there, with the faithful streicher to keep him company, he spent the next few weeks, partly upon the thankless revision of 'fiesco' and partly upon 'louise miller', which interested him more. having done his best with 'fiesco' he sent it to dalberg, who curtly refused it a second time. his theatrical hopes thus completely baffled, schiller turned over his play to the bookseller schwan, who gave him eleven louis d'ors for it and immediately published it as a book for the reader. in his extremity the exile now bethought him of the kind-hearted lady who had offered him an asylum in case of need. frau henriette von wolzogen was a widow of humble means who had several sons in the academy at stuttgart. she had conceived a liking for schiller, and although there was some danger that her rôle of protectress might, if discovered, offend the duke of württemberg, she did not hesitate to keep her word. the necessary arrangements were soon made, and late in november schiller bade farewell to streicher and set out for bauerbach, a little village near meiningen, to occupy the vacant cottage that had been placed at his disposal. he still kept the name of 'dr. ritter',--not so much from the fear of arrest, probably, as from a natural desire to remain in obscurity until he had won a position which would justify his flight in the eyes of the world, and more particularly of his father. while at oggersheim he had occasionally sent out misleading letters, in which he spoke of journeys here and there, of remarkable prosperity and of brilliant prospects in leipzig, berlin and st. petersburg. but his family knew of his whereabouts, and before leaving the palatinate he contrived a meeting with his mother and his sister christophine, who drove over to a half-way village to see him. he arrived at bauerbach on the 7th of december, and wrote thus to streicher on the following day: 'at last i am here, happy and contented that i am actually ashore. i found everything in excess of my wishes; needs no longer trouble me, and no annoyances from outside shall disturb my poetic dreams and my idealistic illusions.'--and in this quiet retreat, well supplied by the villagers with the necessaries of physical existence, he did actually find for the next seven months all that he needed. there were books, friendship, leisure, peace,--until the peace was disturbed by a maiden's eyes. the books came from a man named reinwald, who was in charge of the ducal library at meiningen and to whom schiller, foreseeing his own need, had made haste to introduce himself. reinwald was some twenty-two years older than schiller, a bit of a poet and a man of some literary ambition; but he had not got on well in the world. it was fated that he should marry christophine schiller, become peevish and sour in the course of time and lose the respect of his brother-in-law. for the present, however, he proved a very useful friend; for he not only executed orders for books and tobacco (schiller had learned to smoke and take snuff), but he served as general intermediary between the mysterious dr. ritter and the outside world. schiller's nature craved friendship, and his imagination easily endowed reinwald with the qualities of an ideal companion of the soul. after a while we find him writing in such a strain as this: your visit the day before yesterday produced a glorious effect, i feel my spirits renewed and a warmer life courses through all my nerves. my situation in this solitude has drawn upon my soul the fate of stagnant water, which becomes foul unless it is stirred up a little now and then. and i too hope to become necessary to your heart.[48] as for reinwald, he had long since passed the effusive age, but it pleased him to receive the younger man's confidence. he wrote in his diary: 'to-day schiller opened his heart to me,--a youth who has already been through the school of life,--and i found him worthy to be called my friend. i do not believe that i have given my confidence to an unworthy man. he has an extraordinary mind and i believe that germany will some day name his name with pride.'--which was not bad guessing in its way. excepting reinwald and the villagers schiller saw at first but little of his fellow-mortals. both on his own account and for the sake of frau von wolzogen he wished that the persons who saw him should not know who he was. so he continued to scatter false reports with a liberal hand: he had gone to hannover, was going to london, to america, and so forth. in the mean time, with no thought of leaving his nest at bauerbach, he devoted himself to his work. for the first time in his life he was the master of his own movements; he had a chance to collect himself, to browse among his books, to meditate and to dream. and as for mankind in general, he felt that he had no cause to love it. 'with the warmest feeling ', so he wrote after a time, when the first bitterness had passed away, 'i had embraced half the world and found at last that i had in my arms a cold lump of ice.'[49] withal the demands of work were imperious. he had risked everything upon his chances of literary success and it was necessary to win. he had broken for good and all with the duke of württemberg and there was nothing to be hoped for in that quarter. at the same time,--and the fact is characteristic of his large-mindedness,--he resolved not to air his personal grievance. to frau von wolzogen, who had been admonishing him never to forget his debt to the stuttgart academy, he wrote: 'however it may be with regard to that, you have my word that i will never belittle the duke of württemberg.' toward the end of december the wintry dullness of his bauerbach cottage was brightened by the arrival of its owner and her daughter. lotte von wolzogen was a blond school-girl who had not yet passed her seventeenth birthday. the records do not credit her with exceptional beauty, but she was sufficiently good-looking and her demure girlish innocence appeared to schiller very lovable. not that his plight was at all desperate; he hardly knew his own mind and was in no position to make love to any maiden, least of all to one with that menacing _von_ in her name. still he liked fräulein lotte very much, and the tenderness which now began to manifest itself in his letters to the mother must be credited in part to the daughter. were this not so we could hardly account for such expressions as these, which are contained in a letter written after the ladies had left bauerbach for a short sojourn in the neighboring waldorf: 'since your absence i am stolen from myself. to feel a great and lively rapture is like looking at the sun; it is still before you long after you have turned away your face, and the eye is blinded to all weaker rays. but i shall take great care not to extinguish this agreeable illusion.' and again after they had left the meiningen region for stuttgart, with a promise to return in may: 'dearest friend--a week behind me without you. so there is one of the fourteen got rid of. i could wish that time would put on its utmost speed until may, so as to move thereafter so much the more slowly.' such flutterings of the heart were not altogether favorable to that austere program of literary industry which the ambitious young dramatist had set for himself. when a man is in love other things seem more or less negligible, and it takes resolution to steer a firm course. schiller was resolute--by spells. in the first list of books ordered from meiningen we find noted, along with works of shakspere, robertson, hume and lessing, 'that part of the abbé st. réal's works which contains the history of don carlos of spain.' from this we see that a second historical drama was already under way. at first, however, it was not 'don carlos' that claimed the most attention, but 'louise miller ', which had made considerable progress in oggersheim. by january 14, 1785, schiller was able to pronounce the new play finished, though his letters show that the revision occupied him some time longer. meanwhile we hear of other dramatic projects,--a 'maria stuart' and a 'friedrich imhof', whatever this last may have been. nothing is known of it save that it was to deal with jesuitical intrigue, the inquisition, religious fanaticism, the history of the bastille, and the passion for gambling.[50] by the end of march he had decided, after long vacillation between these two themes, to drop both of them and proceed with 'don carlos'. he began in prose, identifying himself completely with his hero and writing with joyous enthusiasm. a letter of april 14 to reinwald deals at length with love and friendship and their relation to poetic creation. all love, we read, is at bottom love of ourselves. we see in the beloved person the sundered elements of our own being, and the soul yearns to perfect itself in the process of reunion. thus love and friendship are of the nature of poetic imagination,--the waking into life of a pleasing illusion. wherefore the poet must love his characters. he must not be the painter of his hero, but rather his hero's sweetheart or bosom friend. then he makes the application to don carlos in these words: i must confess to you that in a sense he takes the place of my sweetheart, i carry him in my heart,--_ich schwärme mit ihm durch die gegend um_.... he shall have the soul of shakspere's hamlet, the blood and nerves of leisewitz's julius, and his pulse from me. besides that i shall make it my duty in this play, in my picture of the inquisition, to avenge outraged mankind ... and pierce to the heart a sort of men whom the dagger of tragedy has hitherto only grazed. but the 'bosom friend' of don carlos soon had his thoughts pulled in other directions. in the first place there came, very unexpectedly, a sugary letter from dalberg. what led him to make fresh overtures to the man whom, a few months before, he had treated so shabbily, is not difficult to make out. he had become convinced that there was after all nothing to be feared from the duke of württemberg. moreover, since the peremptory rejection of 'fiesco' the mannheim theater had been doing a very poor business. what more natural than that the shrewd intendant, with an eye to better houses, should bethink him of the pen that had written 'the robbers'? from schwan and from streicher, who had remained in mannheim, he knew of schiller's address and occupation. so he wrote him a gracious letter, inquiring after his welfare and expressing particular interest in the new play. it was now schiller's turn to be foxy. he replied that he was very well, and that as for the play, 'louise miller', it was a tragedy with a copious admixture of satirical and comic elements that would probably render it quite unfit for the stage. dalberg replied that the specified defects were merits,--he would like to see the manuscript. the upshot of the correspondence was that schiller, who had been negotiating with a leipzig publisher but had been unable to make an acceptable bargain for the publication of 'louise miller', now determined to revise it for the stage and meet the views of dalberg if possible. so about the middle of april he laid aside 'don carlos' and, for the third time in his life, devoted himself to the irksome task of converting a literary drama into a stage-play. on the 3rd of may he wrote to reinwald: my l.m. drives me out of bed at five o'clock in the morning. here i sit now, sharpening pens and chewing thoughts. it is certain and true that compulsion clips the wings of the spirit. to write with such solicitude for the theater, so hastily because i am pressed for time, and yet without fault, is an art. but i feel that my 'louise' is a gainer.... my lady [lady milford in the play] interests me almost as much as my dulcinea in stuttgart [lotte von wolzogen]. ere the revision of the new tragedy was finished dulcinea herself arrived in bauerbach; an event to which schiller had looked forward with joyous palpitations and anxious forebodings. for back in march frau von wolzogen had written him that she and her daughter would be accompanied on their northward journey by a certain herr winkelmann, a friend of the family. schiller at once divined the approach of a rival and wrote in great agitation that he would go to berlin if winkelmann came. in justification of his threat he made the diaphanous plea that his incognito was of the utmost importance to him, and that the inquisitive winkelmann (whom he had known at the academy) would be sure to blab. to this frau von wolzogen sent some sort of soothing reply, hinting at the same time that she, the mother, would not interfere with her daughter's choice. so schiller resolved to stand his ground. the ladies arrived in the latter part of may and soon thereafter he was given to understand that lotte's affections were fixed upon the other man. there was nothing for him now but the role of lofty resignation. to his former schoolmate, wilhelm von wolzogen, he wrote as follows: you have commended to me your lotte, whom i know completely, i thank you for the great proof of your love.... believe me, my best of friends, i envy you this amiable sister. still just as if from the hands of the creator, innocent, the fairest, tenderest, most sensitive soul, and not yet a breath of the general corruption on the bright mirror of her nature,--thus i know your lotte, and woe to him who brings a cloud over this innocent soul!... your mother has made me a confidant in a matter that may decide the fate of your lotte and has told me how you feel upon the subject. [it appears that wilhelm disliked the young man,] i know herr w--n and ... believe me, he is not unworthy of your sister.... i really esteem him, though i cannot at present be called his friend. he loves your lotte and i know he loves her like a noble man, and your lotte loves him like a girl that loves for the first time. but the foolish dreams were not so easily to be given their quietus, especially when he discovered that lotte was only half in love with winkelmann after all. then there seemed hope for him and he surrendered himself freely to the intoxication of his little summer romance. what were the world and a poet's fame in comparison with happiness? still he did not declare himself. he often called frau von wolzogen 'mother', and averred in letters that no son could love her better. probably a word from her might have led to an engagement. but the word was not spoken. she was a sensible lady, who knew how to look into the future and to guard the welfare both of her daughter and of her protege. she saw that if he was to make his way in the world as a dramatist he must return to the world; a prolongation of the bauerbach idyl could lead to nothing but disappointment and unhappiness. besides, his incognito had now become only a conventional fiction; everybody knew who he was. one day, accordingly, as they were walking together, she suggested that he pay a visit to mannheim and see what could be done with dalberg. he resolved to follow her advice. late in july he set out, promising himself and her a speedy return. but it was not so to be. becoming absorbed in the business of a new career he continued, indeed, to think of her affectionately and to write to her, but at ever-increasing intervals; and after a few months bauerbach and the wolzogens were only a delightful memory. it is true that after the lapse of nearly a year he one day took it into his head to suggest to the mother that she take him for a son-in-law. but the wooing went no further. after all he had not really been in love with lotte in particular so much as with an ideal of domestic bliss. shortly before his departure from bauerbach there had been some talk of his accompanying reinwald on a contemplated journey to weimar, where he might make the acquaintance of karl august, goethe and wieland. in his excellent little book upon schiller, streicher expresses regret that his friend had not acted upon this suggestion instead of following the 'siren voice' that led to the palatinate. but it is difficult to sympathize with this regret. he was not yet ripe for the role that fate held in store for him in thüringen. his education was to proceed yet a while longer by the process of flaying. he was to suffer and grow strong; to battle further with the goblins of despair; to tread the quicksands of adversity and fight his way through to a firm footing among the sons of men. who shall say that it was not better so? the long-cherished hopes of a connection with the mannheim theater were destined this time to be fulfilled. in the course of a few weeks schiller entered into a contract which assured him, for a year at least, a respectable status in society and opened a new chapter in his life. before we take up that chapter, however, it will be proper to consider the new play which he had brought with him as a passport to dalberg's favor. thus far he had called it by the name of its heroine, but when it was put upon the stage it was rechristened, at the suggestion of the actor iffland, and has ever since been known as 'cabal and love'. the revision which he had undertaken, after the reopening of correspondence with dalberg, was even now not quite finished; so that the final touches had to be given at mannheim. it is probable that the political satire, which was based in part upon veritable history and contained transparent allusions to well-known personages, was more or less toned down in deference to the wishes of dalberg. minor changes were also made at the behest of the actors. but while it was not played and not printed until the spring of 1784, it belongs in its substance and its spirit, not to the mannheim period of schiller's life, but to the period which he had spent in hiding. it is a freeman's comment upon high life as he had known it. scrupulously enough schiller kept the letter of his promise not to use his pen in belittling the duke of württemberg. but the _wirtschaft_ in stuttgart was fair game, and there were other ways of masking a dramatic battery than to lay the scene in italy. in 'cabal and love' the reigning prince does not appear upon the stage. footnotes: [footnote 48: letter of march, 1783; in "schillers briefe", edited by jonas, vol. i, page 101.] [footnote 49: letter of jan. 4, 1783, to frau von wolzogen. ] [footnote 50: undated letter of march, 1783; "schillers briefe", i, 101.] chapter vi cabal and love ich bin ein edelmann--lasz doch sehen, ob mein adelbrief älter ist als der risz zum unendlichen weltall; oder mein wappen gültiger ist als die handschrift des himmels in louisens augen: dieses weib ist für diesen mann.--'_cabal and love_'. in 'cabal and love' schiller found again, as he had previously found in 'the robbers', a thoroughly congenial theme. more properly the theme found him, took possession of him and would not let him go, until the inner tumult had subsided and german literature had been enriched with its most telling tragedy of the social conflict. 'fiesco' had proved a disappointment; he had not been able to bring himself into perfect sympathy with the subject, and at the best his italian conspiracy was a far-away matter. now he set foot again upon his native heath and all went better. in spite of certain defects which led him to speak of it later as rather badly designed, 'cabal and love' must be pronounced the most artistic and the most interesting of his early plays. it is the tragedy of two lovers, an honorable aristocrat and a girl of humble birth, who are done to death through a vile intrigue which is dictated by the exigencies of an infamous political régime. by means of a compromising letter, which is not forged but extorted under duress, the lover is made to suspect his sweetheart's fidelity; and she, though innocent, is prevented by scruples of conscience from undeceiving him. in a jealous fury he gives her poison and then partakes of it himself. the mischief is wrought not so much by the wickedness of the great, albeit that comes in for a share of the responsibility, as by the obstinate class prejudice, amounting to a tragic superstition, of the heroine and her father. many of the details were taken over by schiller from his predecessors; but he so improved upon them, so vitalized the familiar conflicts and situations, and threw into his work such a power of genuine pathos, caught from the pathos of real life, that 'cabal and love' still stands out as a notable document of the revolutionary epoch. the epoch produced many bourgeois tragedies, but schiller's is much the best of them all. before we look at it more closely it will be worth while to glance at the history of the type in germany. the tragedy of middle-class life first took root, as is well known, in england. it was in 1732 that lillo brought upon the drury lane stage his acted tale of george barnwell, the london 'prentice who is beguiled by a harlot, robs his master, kills his uncle and ends his career on the gallows, to the great grief of the doting maria, his master's daughter. the prologue tells how the experiment was expected to strike the public of that day: the tragic muse sublime delights to show princes distrest and scenes of royal woe; in awful pomp majestic to relate the fall of nations or some hero's fate; that scepter'd chiefs may by example know the strange vicissitudes of things below.... upon our stage indeed, with wished success, you've sometimes seen her in a humbler dress, great only in distress. when she complains, in southern's, rowe's, or otway's moving strains, the brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye the absent pomp with brighter gems supply, forgive us then if we attempt to show in artless strains a tale of private woe. so it appears that 'barnwell' was something new, yet not entirely new. the stately tragedy of solemn edification, at which no one was expected to weep, had already yielded a part of its sovereignty to the tragedy of distress. it occurred to lillo that tears could be drawn for the woes of the middle class, which had been looked upon as suitable only for comedy. the event proved that he had reckoned well: the "brilliant drops" fell copiously, the innovation crossed the channel, and soon the bourgeois tragedy,--whence by an easy differentiation the lacrimose, pathetic, or serious comedy,--had entered upon its european career. the first german example was 'miss sara sampson', written in 1755, wherein the daughter of a fond english squire is lured away from her home, like clarissa harlowe, by the profligate mellefont, who promises to marry her. the pair take lodgings at a low london inn, where mellefont finds pretexts for delaying the marriage ceremony. presently his former mistress, marwood, appears--a proud and passionate woman of sin. she claims him as the mother of his child, but having now found out what true love is he spurns her. bitter interviews follow, with, spiteful recriminations and awful threats. marwood tells her story to sara and finally ends the tension by poisoning her, whereupon mellefont commits suicide. in writing this play lessing was in no way concerned with any social question. he constituted himself the champion of the bourgeoisie before the tribunal of melpomene, but not before the conscience of mankind. the woes of hero and heroine are in no way related to class prejudice or to the great democratic upheaval of the century. lessing's atmosphere is the moral and sentimental atmosphere of richardson, though his literary power is incomparably greater. 'miss sara sampson' did not long hold the stage, but its influence is discernible in subsequent developments. the 'man between two women' became a regular feature of the new domestic tragedy. in play after play we find a soulful, clinging, romantic creature--usually the title-heroine--set over against a full-blooded rival whose ways are ways of wantonness. lessing himself repeated the group in 'emilia galotti', which in its turn became the mother of a new brood. the tragedy of lawless passion led by an easy step to the tragedy of social conflict, which portrayed the depravity of princes and nobles in their relation to the common people, or called upon mankind to weep for the woes of lovers separated by the barriers of rank. in germany the species was very timely. nowhere else in europe had the nobility so little to be proud of, and nowhere else was the pride of birth so stupidly intolerant. that fruitful theme of earlier and later poets, the love of nobleman for maid of low degree, had been lost in the age of gallantry, save in lubricious tales of intrigue and seduction. the appalling dissoluteness which characterized the french court during the first half of the eighteenth century, and was duly copied by the princelings of germany, had poisoned the minds of high and low alike and led to a state of affairs in which there was little room for a noble or even a serious conception of love. love was understood to be concupiscence. if an aristocrat stooped to a bourgeois girl, it was his affair and at the worst only an aberration of taste; her fate was of no importance. when the inevitable reaction set in, it took the form of a debauch of sentimentalism. the poetry of real passion came back into literature and people wept for joy to find that they had hearts. love was no longer a frivolous game played for the gratification of lust, but a divine rapture of fathomless and ineffable import. it was now the era of the beautiful soul, of tender sentiment, of virtuous transports and of endless talk about all these things. love being natural,--a part of that nature to which the world was now resolved to return,--it was sacred, and superior to all human conventions. it belonged to the sphere of the rights of man. its enemy was everywhere the corrupt heart and the worldly, calculating mind. fortunately the new ecstasy associated itself with a strong enthusiasm for the simplification of life; for the poetry of nature and of rustic employments; for the sweetness of domestic affection. in germany public sentiment had already been prepared for a certain idealization of the bourgeoisie. enlightened rulers and publicists, here and there, were coming to feel that a virtuous yeomanry was the sure foundation of a state's welfare. countless idyls and pastorals and moralizing romances had thrown a nimbus of poetry about the simple virtues and humble employments of the poor, and taught people to contrast these things with the corruption and artificiality of courts and cities. it was, however, the passionate eloquence of rousseau which first gave to this contrast a revolutionary significance, and it was rousseau who first stirred the reading world with a woeful tale of lovers separated by the prejudices of caste. in 'the new heloise' it is the lady who is the aristocrat. julie d'etange, the daughter of a baron, wishes to marry the untitled st. preux, to whom in a transport of passion she has yielded up her honor. but the baron d'etange is an implacable stickler for rank and she is a dutiful daughter; whence her marriage to the elderly infidel, wolmar, and the well-known moral ending of the novel. the thought that concerns us here is best expressed by the enlightened english peer, lord b., who thus expostulates with baron d'etange: let us judge of the past by the present; for two or three citizens who win distinction by honest means, a thousand knaves every day get their families ennobled. but to what end serves that nobility of which their descendants are so proud, unless it be to prove the robberies and infamy of their ancestor? there are, i confess, a great number of bad men among the common people; but the odds are always twenty to one against a gentleman that he is descended from a scoundrel.... in what consists then the honor of that nobility of which you are so proud? how does it affect the glory of one's country or the good of mankind? a mortal enemy to liberty and the laws, what did it ever produce, in the most of those countries where it has flourished, but the power of tyranny and the oppression of the people? will you presume to boast, in a republic, of a rank that is destructive to virtue and humanity? of a rank that makes its boast of slavery and wherein men blush to be men?[51] this is of course the language of passion and prejudice (it would not else be rousseau), but there was enough of truth in it, as in the case of rousseau's other fervors, to rouse the revolutionary spirit. german literature began to teem with novels and plays which exhibit the sufferings of some untitled hero or heroine at the hands of a vicious aristocracy. the theme is touched upon in 'werther', but without becoming an important issue. it appears in wagner's 'infanticide', wherein a butcher's daughter, evchen humbrecht, is violated by a titled officer, runs away from home in her shame, kills her child and is finally found by the repentant author of her disgrace. we meet it again in lenz's 'private tutor', the tragedy of a german st. preux who falls in love with his titled pupil and dishonors her, with the result that she too runs away from home and tries to commit suicide, while her lover in his chagrin emasculates himself. these are grotesque tragedies, not devoid of literary power, but devoid of high sentiment and saturated with a woeful vulgarity. we cannot wonder that the high-minded schiller should have condemned wagner's malodorous play as a mediocre performance. his incentive came rather from gemmingen's 'head of the house', which in turn carries us back to diderot. in the hands of diderot, democrat, moralist and apostle of the _genre honnête_, it was natural that the drama of class conflict should end happily. in his 'father of the family', written in 1758 and first played in 1761, the contrast of high and low is vividly portrayed, but without bitterness. the aristocratic st. albin d'orbisson falls in love with a poor girl from the country who lives in an attic and earns her own living. sophie's beauty and virtue make a man of him and he wishes to marry her, but is opposed by his kind-hearted, querulous father, who argues the case with him at great length, confronting passion with prudential common-sense. st. albin is also opposed by his rich uncle, the commandeur, from whom he has prospects. the uncle plots to get sophie away by having her arrested, but is baffled by a counter-intrigue. stormy scenes follow the revelation, and in the end it appears that sophie is not a plebeian maiden at all, but the niece of the purse-proud commandeur, who has neglected his poor relations. with the literary and dramatic qualities of this play, its absence of humor and of sparkling dialogue, its tedious moralizing, its hollow pathos and its general relation to diderot's dramatic theory, we are not here directly concerned. what is important to observe is that, as a contribution to the burning social question, its point is blunted by the fact that its heroine is not what she seems to be. the whole matter reduces to a brief misunderstanding in an aristocratic family. villainy is thwarted, true love comes into its own, and the foundations of society remain as they were. diderot's 'father of the family' enjoyed a short vogue in france and italy and met with considerable favor in germany. most noteworthy among minor german plays that were influenced by it is gemmingen's 'head of the house'. gemmingen was himself an aristocrat, a baron by title, who was born in 1755. after studying law he settled in mannheim, where he became deeply interested in the drama, so that in 1778 he was given the position of dramatist to the newly established 'national theater'. two years later he brought out his 'head of the house' with great success. the piece is a pendant of diderot's, but by no means a slavish imitation. gemmingen's 'head of the house' is an upright german nobleman of the admirable sort, who returns home after a long absence to find the affairs of his family very much deranged. his eldest son, karl, has fallen madly in love with lotte wehrmann, the daughter of an impecunious artist, gotten her with child, and promised to marry her when his father shall have returned and given his consent. the younger son, ferdinand, an officer, has taken to gaming, lost heavily and has a duel on his hands. his son-in-law, monheim, has become infatuated with a dazzling widow, countess amaldi, grown cold toward his wife sophie, and the quarreling pair are eager for a divorce. the tangle is further complicated by the fact that amaldi, an excellent match, is in love with karl. the perplexed father sets at work with the tools of common sense and rational argument. he urges karl to break with lotte for his career's sake. the irresolute and dutiful karl consents, saying nothing of lotte's approaching motherhood, and the rumor of his intended marriage to the countess is spread abroad. when lotte hears it she rushes to amaldi and wildly demands her lover in the name of her unborn child. when the father hears the whole story he no longer thinks of rank but of honor. he bids karl marry his true love and retire to the country, where, as overseer of a large estate, he will be less encumbered by a plebeian wife than in the career which had been planned for him. the magnanimous amaldi furnishes the bride's dowry, the other domestic complications are easily adjusted and all ends happily. dramatically gemmingen's play is rather tame, though its literary merit is considerable. he had a fair measure of constructive skill, but very little of poetic impulse or of dramatic verve. his best scenes interest us more for their good sense than for any more stirring qualities. his nearest approach to a strong character is the paterfamilias himself, who is certainly much less "woolly and mawkish"[52] than his pendant in diderot. next one may place the artist wehrmann. karl is a poor stick, amaldi is rather colorless, and lotte would be quite insipid but for her impending motherhood, on which everything is made to turn. such as it was, however, the play excited the cordial admiration of schiller, who read it soon after its appearance. very likely it may have suggested to him the thought of trying his own hand upon a drama in the bourgeois sphere, but it was not until july, 1782,--just after he had finished reading wagner's 'infanticide',--that the plan of 'louise miller' began to take shape in his mind. gemmingen's poor artist, wehrmann, became the poor fiddler, miller, and the daughter lotte was rechristened louise. the aristocratic lover, gemmingen's karl, was named ferdinand von walter, and amaldi was converted into lady milford. one of gemmingen's subordinate characters, the foppish nobleman, dromer, who goes about making compliments to everybody, reappears in schiller's play as the perfumed tale-bearer and exquisite ladies' man, chamberlain von kalb. the places represented are three in number and the same in both plays. here, however, the parallel ends. instead of gemmingen's high-minded paterfamilias we have the rascally president von walter, who, with his tool wurm, reminds one of lessing's prince and marinelli. and what is much more important, the relation of the lovers is so portrayed that we get the pure poetry of passion, such as it is, without any tinge of grossness. in its earliest phase schiller's plan looked toward a telling tragi-comedy for the stage, with a plenty of rough humor and caustic satire at the expense of 'high-born fools and scoundrels'. as he worked, the possibilities of his theme developed. an abstract enthusiasm for the rights of man was kindled by honest love of the common people, and by the lingering smart of a personal wrong, into a holy zeal of vengeance. president walter was painted in colors which were taken largely from the political history and the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the württemberg court. as this court had its angel of light in soiled garments, lady milford was fitted out with the benevolent qualities of franziska von hohenheim; and as the portrait grew in firmness its author fell in love with it, like the young goethe with his adelheid. when he came to depict the jealousy of ferdinand, he had the advantage of a personal acquaintance with the green-eyed monster. thus the play was extracted from the book of life, as schiller had been able to read it, and that accounts for its vitality. but in his details he is nowhere less original. not only in the general conception of important characters, but in particular scenes, situations, motives, contrasts and forms of expression, we can see the influence of the literary tradition which he inherited. to show the exact nature and the full extent of this indebtedness would be a tedious undertaking, which would require pages of quotation from works whose chief interest now is that they served as quarry for schiller. three or four illustrations will suffice. our play begins with a scene which at once recalls what was originally the opening scene of wagner's 'infanticide'. in both there is a blustering father,--lessing's odoardo reduced to the bourgeois sphere,--discoursing with his silly wife upon the dangers that threaten their daughter from keeping aristocratic company. in both the domestic thunderer expresses himself in rough, strong language, and is only made the more furious by his wife's efforts to allay his fears. in wagner's next scene magister humbrecht comes to woo evchen, just as schiller's wurm comes to woo louise, and we hear that the girl's head has been turned by reading novels. just so louise, whose father can scarcely find words to express his detestation of the young baron's infernal, belletristic poison. when wurm arrives at miller's and asks for louise, he is informed that she has just gone to church. 'glad of that, glad of that', he replies, 'i shall have in her a pious christian wife'. here is a reminiscence of the scene in which lessing's count appiani exclaims, on hearing that emilia has just been at church: 'that is right; i shall have in you a pious wife'. the devout heroine was a hardly less hackneyed figure in the dramatic literature of the time than the blustering father of whom goethe complained.[53] in schiller's louise we have the religious sentiment sublimated into something quite too seraphic for human nature's daily food. her high-keyed sense of duty to god, her natural filial piety and her superstitious reverence for the social order, combine to produce in her a curious distraction which is the real source of the tragic conflict. she feels that her love is holy but that marriage would be sinful; and so she hesitates, responds to her lover's ardor with tremblings and solicitudes, knows not what to do, does the foolish thing and atones tragically for her weakness. not before schiller's time had this conflict between love and filial duty been so powerfully depicted, but it is found in wagner's 'remorse after the deed' (1775), wherein a coachman's daughter, friederike walz, is loved by the aristocratic langen, who is opposed by his mother. langen goes to his sweetheart, all courage and resolution. he is prepared, like leisewitz's julius, to defy his kin, renounce the lures of his rank and flee to the ends of the earth with 'rikchen'. to which she replies: 'langen, you are terrible. to marry with the curse of parents is to make one's whole posterity miserable'. so louise replies to ferdinand's similar entreaty: 'and be followed by your father's curse! a curse, thoughtless man, which even murderers never utter in vain, and which like a ghost would pursue us fugitives mercilessly from sea to sea.' in the sentimental novel 'siegwart', the heroine, therese, loves a young squire, not for his blue blood, but for the nobility of his heart. like louise she renounces her love for this life, and bids him farewell. in writing to him she describes a scene between her father and his: your father came dashing into our yard with two huntsmen. 'are you the ----?' he called up to me. 'is that siegwart? he's a scoundrel, if he knows it. he wants to seduce my son. and this, i suppose, is the nice creature (here he turned to me again) who has made a fool of him. a nice little animal, by my soul!'... my father, who can show heat when he is provoked, told him to stop calling such names; that he was a decent man and i a decent girl. here we seem to have the suggestion of the stirring scene in which the irate old fiddler threatens to throw president von walter out of doors for insulting louise. it would be very easy to give further examples of schiller's talent for taking what suited his purpose, but such philology is not very profitable. after all, what one wishes to know is not where the architect got his materials, but what he made of them. and what he made was a play abounding in admirable scenes, but ending in a rather unsatisfactory manner. with even less violence to the inner logic of the piece than was necessary in the case of 'fiesco', 'cabal and love' might have been given a happy ending. the whole tragedy hangs by a thread in the fifth act. lady milford has fled and is no longer a factor in the entanglement. the wicked president has relented and is ready to yield. old miller, released from prison, returns to his house and finds louise brooding over her purpose of suicide. he preaches to her upon the sin of self-destruction and pleads with her to give up her aristocratic lover. she promises. then ferdinand comes and demands an explanation of the fatal letter. a word from her at this point, a momentary _accès_ or simple common sense, would undeceive him and end the whole difficulty. of course she must not break her oath; and one cannot blame her sweet simplicity for not taking refuge in the maxim that an oath given under duress is not binding. but her oath merely pledges her to acknowledge the letter as her voluntary act. there is no reason why she should not solemnly assure ferdinand of her innocence, tell him that they are the victims of a plot and send him to his father for an explanation. nothing prevents her from speaking in time the words that she actually does speak after she has taken the poison, but before she knows that she has taken it: 'a horrible fatality has confused the language of our hearts. if i might open my mouth, walter, i could tell you things', etc. if, out of filial piety, louise is minded to give up her lover, there is at any rate no reason why she should wish him to despise her forever. every natural girlish instinct requires her to clear herself. that she does not do this, but persists in a course which of all courses is the most unnatural,--seeing that she now has nothing to fear from any source,--produces a painful suspense which is anything but tragic. no skill of the actress can altogether save her from a certain appearance of fatuous weak-mindedness, or forestall the cynical conclusion that she dies chiefly in order that it may be fulfilled which was said unto himself by the author, namely: i will write a tragedy. and yet such a conclusion would not be perfectly just to schiller. it is true that he was all for tragedy and that a happy moral ending, in the vein of diderot, would not have been to his taste. but this does not tell the whole story. the romantic lovers are sacrificed in order that the guilty president and his vile accomplices may be brought to book and punished for their sins. the heart of the matter for schiller was to free his mind with respect to the infamies of high life. it was this that tipped his pen with fire. of course there are german critics who find louise's conduct in this last scene quite 'inevitable' and full of a high tragic pathos. thus palleske says of her: her anxious piety, her touching and indeed so intelligible devotion to her father, her lack of freedom, bring on her fate. a veil of mourning rests upon all she says. heroic liberty of action, such as befits a juliet, is made impossible to this girl by her birth in the bourgeoisie; she has only the liberty to perish, not the courage to be happy. of guilt there can be no question in this case: her anxiety, her filial devotion, are her whole guilt; her virtue, her love for her father, become her ruin. whoever thoroughly knows the bourgeoisie, which had yet to recover from these wounds,[54] will admit that this character is drawn with terrible truthfulness. this, however, is putting too fine a point upon it; it implies, when closely analyzed, that schiller deliberately made his heroine a little stupid,--a view of her that hardly comports with the rest of the play. to say that she _must_ die because she belongs to the bourgeoisie is mere moonshine, for common sense can readily find a number of escapes. she may cleave to her father and send her lover packing, after proper explanations; or she may cleave to her lover in the face of her father's displeasure; or she may temporize in the hope of changing her father's mind. what she actually does is to goad her lover into a frenzy by her singular conduct and then come to her senses when it is too late. the effect is to cast doubt upon the intensity of her supposed passion for ferdinand. one gets the impression that her previous sentimental ecstasies were not perfectly genuine; that she does not really know what it is to be in love, or how to speak the veritable language of the heart. the truth seems to be that when schiller wrote 'cabal and love', he had not progressed far enough in the knowledge of femininity to be able to draw a perfectly life-like portrait of a girl in louise's station. she is a creature of the same order as amalia and leonora,--a sentimental _schwärmerin_, very much lacking in character and mother-wit. from the first the expression of her love does not ring perfectly true. we suspect her of phrase-making,--she is quite too ethereal and ecstatic for a plain fiddler's daughter. no trace here of that homely poetic realism,--gretchen at the wash-tub, or lotte cutting bread and butter,--with which goethe knew how to invest _his_ bourgeois maidens. for aught we can learn from her discourse schiller's louise might be a princess, brought up on a diet of klopstock's odes. that a girl, returning from church, should inquire of her parents if her lover has called, is quite in order. that she should then confess that thoughts of him have come between her and her creator, is pardonable. but what are we to think when she goes on to say to her own parents: this little life of mine, oh that i might breathe it out into a soft caressing zephyr to cool his face! this little flower of youth, were it but a violet, that he might step on it, and it might die modestly beneath his feet! that would be enough for me, my father.... not that i want him now. i renounce him for this life. but then, mother, then, when the barriers of rank are laid low; when all the hateful wrappings of earthly station fall away from us, and men are only men,--i shall bring nothing with me save my innocence; but, you know, father has so often said that pomp and splendid titles will be cheap when god comes, and that hearts will rise in price. then i shall be rich. then tears will be counted for triumphs, and beautiful thoughts instead of ancestry. i shall be aristocratic then, mother. what advantage will he have then over his sweetheart? what can one think, indeed, except that this supernal maiden has been reading klopstock's famous 'ode to fanny'?[55] louise's passion, then, is no dangerous earthly flame, but a sentimental dream, a private revel in ecstatic emotion. we opine that she does not really need her lover, as a mortal entity, at all, and are prepared to find her fearsome and irresolute in his presence. 'they are going to separate us,' she exclaims, as if she herself had no voice in the matter, when really her own timidity is the great obstacle. she is no gretchen, or clärchen, ready to give all for love's sake and jump the consequences; still less is she a bourgeois juliet, prepared to brave a family tempest provided only that her romeo's bent be honorable, his purpose marriage. those externalities of rank which she expects to drop out of sight in heaven loom up very large in her earthly field of vision. she fears her father's displeasure. she pretends to fear the ruin of her ferdinand's career, albeit he assures her solemnly that she is of more importance to him than all else in the world. she is of the opinion that her marriage to a man with a _von_ in his name and prospects in life would be 'the violation of a sanctuary'; would 'unjoint the social world and demolish the eternal, universal order'. wherefore she is minded to renounce him. 'let the vain, deluded girl'--so she sighs--'weep away her grief within lonely walls; no one will trouble himself about her tears,--empty and dead is my future,--but i shall still now and then take a smell at the withered nosegay of the past'--no wonder that before she reaches this awful climax, ferdinand smashes the fiddle and bursts into laughter. on the stage, the scene in which the agonized louise is compelled to write the compromising letter is one of the most effective in the piece; and yet how futile and absurd the whole intrigue would be if the conspirators were not able to count upon her being a goose! one cannot blame her, of course, for doing that which appears to be necessary in order to save her father's life. one may pardon to her distress the solemn oath that she will acknowledge the letter as her voluntary act. but if she were really in love with ferdinand as she has pretended to be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! in the scene with lady milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic, sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why a girl that knows so much should not know more. she herself has just cast her lover off, after meeting his passionate entreaties with cool prudential argument. in a stagy paroxysm of jealousy she resigns her ferdinand to lady milford, warning her, however, that her bridal chamber will be haunted by the ghost of a suicide. but why should louise wish to quit this life? she has said farewell to ferdinand, alleging that duty bids her remain and endure. she has chosen her part. all that separates her from her lover is her own chimerical sentiment of duty. her virtue is intact. she has not the motive, say of gemmingen's lotte, for self-destruction. it is hard to take her seriously at this point, and we wonder that lady milford takes her seriously. truth to tell, louise makes a rather tame and uninteresting tragic heroine. notwithstanding all her fervid phrases, she is essentially cold. did schiller intend this effect, or is it due to the fact that he could not have portrayed her differently? did it really spring from his limited observation of the feminine heart and of girlish ways, or from a deliberate artistic purpose to account adequately for ferdinand's jealousy? had he taken a lesson from the maidenly reserve of lotte von wolzogen and the prudential scruples of her mother? these are questions upon which one can only speculate. as matters stand, the whole catastrophe is made to hinge upon ferdinand's suspicion. a little patience, a little faith in his sweetheart, would turn the course of fate. but her conduct makes faith difficult; so we understand his jealousy, but not so well his previous infatuation. he is in love with a beautiful soul and a pair of forget-me-not eyes, but the presuppositions are a little difficult. he is resolved to marry louise for better or worse,--it is all understood, so far as he is concerned. although there is no love-scene in the play, we do hear of precedent scenes of passionate self-surrender (always within the limits of virtue). one cannot help asking: where were louise's scruples then? was she ignorant of her father's prejudice or resolved to brave it? had she never reflected upon the august foundations of the social order? had she resisted ferdinand's suit and warned him that he must be content with a yearning friendship on earth and a union of souls in heaven? none of these suppositions can be said to prepare us fully for her actual conduct in the play, where she appears all along as a helpless bundle of tremors, vacillating between an alleged passion in which we do not fully believe and a sublimated sense of duty that we cannot fully understand. in ferdinand we have schiller's favorite type of tragic hero,--the fervid young enthusiast whose calamity grows out of his own strenuous idealism. he is, however, a less weighty character than karl moor, or carlos, or max piccolomini, because we see in him nothing more than the infatuate lover. in their case love is paired with the spirit of great enterprise; for him it is all in all, so far at least as the action of the play is concerned. his louise sums up the entire macrocosm. if he thinks of doing anything in the world, it is only in order that he may marry her and live with her in a lover's paradise all his life. this is his way of talking: let obstacles come between us like mountains; i will make steps of them and fly to my louise's arms. the storms of adverse fate shall inflate my feeling, danger shall only make my louise the more charming.... i will guard you as the dragon guards the subterraneous gold. trust yourself to me. you need no other angel. i will throw myself between you and fate, receive every wound for you and catch for you every drop from the cup of joy. on this arm shall my louise dance through life, etc. one can pardon some extravagance to a stage lover, since his intoxication is what makes him amiable. who, for example, would abate a jot or tittle from the delicious nonsense of romeo? when he says that carrion flies may seize on the white wonder of dear juliet's hand and steal immortal blessings from her lips, he seems to have expressed himself appropriately. there is no suggestion of mawkishness in his discourse. our ferdinand, however, is distinctly spoony. there went no poetic irony to his creation, and he has no saving sense of humor. he never seems, like romeo, to be toying with hyperbole in an artistic spirit, but it is all dead earnest. such a love-lorn youth must expect to recruit his admirers chiefly from the ranks of the very young. and yet there are times, just as in the case of karl moor, when ferdinand's rhetoric becomes impressive from sheer titanic force. thus when he says to louise, who has just been reminding him of his prospects: 'i am a nobleman,--we will see, however, whether my patent of nobility is older than the ground-plan of the eternal universe; whether my escutcheon is more valid than the hand-writing of heaven in louise's eyes: this woman is for this man.' it is undoubtedly in the scenes with his father that ferdinand appears at his best. here at least there is manly vigor. the contrast between the wicked father and the good son is effectively brought out, although, as in the case of karl and franz moor, it is carried beyond the limits of easy credibility. how unnatural is the relation of the pair! one would think they had never talked with each other before, and that each had lived in complete ignorance of the other's character and inclinations. the father, by way of founding a claim to his son's grateful affection, declares that he has 'trodden the dangerous path to the heart of the prince' and killed his predecessor,--all for the sake of his son. he admits that he is suffering the 'eternal scorpion-stings of conscience,' and yet he expects ferdinand to follow him without a whimper, and he is angry when the young man indignantly renounces the usufruct of his father's crimes. although ferdinand is a major in the army, his marriage with lady milford is arranged for him as if he had no claim to be consulted. the president blurts out his plan with brutal coarseness, and urges it in language which he knows will rouse his son's anger. so when he appears in the miller house he makes himself as odious as possible. diplomacy and finesse are weapons not found in his armory, though he is a courtier and a successful politician. he is simply a cynical brute in high office. in truth his conduct is so very inhuman as to convey an impression of burlesque. he seems copied from some ogre in a fairy tale. but if president von walter appears now like a melodramatic caricature, it is partly because times have changed; for schiller was not without his models in the recent history of württemberg. during the period of karl eugen's worst recklessness--the decade beginning with 1755,--he was loyally abetted by two men, rieger and montmartin, who made themselves thoroughly odious. rieger was a man of talent and knowledge, but without heart and without conscience. it was he who managed the cruel and lawless conscriptions whereby duke karl raised the desired troops for france.[56] young men were simply taken wherever they could be found,--pulled from their beds at night, or seized as they came from church,--and forced into the army under brutal conditions of service. many a württemberg family could have told a tale of barbarity essentially similar to that recounted by the lackey to lady milford in the second act of schiller's play. remorseless oppression of the people, for the purpose of raising money to be spent on the duke's costly whims, became the order of the day. still more brutal and cynical in his methods than rieger was count montmartin, who was made president of the state council in 1758. a cunning and wicked intriguer, he lent himself without scruple to the gratification of his master's lusts and caprices. the daughters of the land were unsafe from his machinations if they had had the misfortune to attract the wanton eye of their sovereign. in 1762, wishing to be rid of his powerful rival, montmartin trumped up a charge that rieger was engaged in treasonable correspondence with prussia. the result was that rieger was publicly disgraced. meeting him one day on parade the duke angrily tore off his military order, struck him with his cane and then shut him up in the hohentwiel, where he lay for four years without light, table, chair or bed. in like manner the patriotic publicist, moser, was imprisoned for five years, without trial and without sentence, because he had withheld his consent to the duke's high-handed proceedings. such was the political system that had afflicted württemberg during schiller's childhood. it furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as it has been called. the name may be allowed to pass, only it should be remembered that _this_ mythology was simply history. the rapier-thrusts of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang their rulers to the nearest tree. this should be borne in mind by any one who, in the milder light of a later and better era, is disposed to carp at schiller for caricaturing the nobility. he was not concerned with aristocracy in general, but with the particular kakistocracy that had disgraced his native land. and all that he did was to exhibit it as it was, or lately had been. footnotes: [footnote 51: 'the new heloise', part 1, letter 62.] [footnote 52: the adjectives are john morley's; "diderot", chap. vii.] [footnote 53: "la première fois que je la vis, ce fut à l'église",--says diderot's st. albin, in recounting the beginning of his infatuation for sophie. so with faust and margaret, and with schiller's beautiful greek lady in 'the ghostseer'.] [footnote 54: "schillers leben und werke", 15. aufl. (1900), p. 297. in earlier editions of palleske's work, which appeared originally in 1858-9, louise was further characterized as 'the crushed heart of the german people'; and the sentence, 'which had to recover from those wounds', read: 'which is beginning to recover'.] [footnote 55: one strophe runs: dann wird ein tag sein, den werd' ich auferstehn! dann wird ein tag sein, den wirst du auferstehn! dann trennt kein schicksal mehr die seelen, die du einander, natur, bestimmtest.] [footnote 56: see above, page 7.] chapter vii theater poet in mannheim die schaubühne ist mehr als jede andere öffentliche anstalt des staats eine schule der praktischen weisheit, ein wegweiser, durch das bürgerliche leben, ein unfehlbarer schlüssel zu den geheimsten zugängen der menschlichen seele.--_discourse on the theater, 1784_. mannheim, famed for the geometric regularity of its streets, was in schiller's day a city of about twenty thousand inhabitants. since 1720 it had been the capital of the bavarian palatinate, and under the elector karl theodor it had acquired some distinction as a nursery of the arts. we have seen that schiller, coming thither from suabia, imagined himself escaping from the land of the barbarians to the land of the greeks. in the year 1777 the upper and lower palatinate were united, and the elector transferred his residence to münchen. for this withdrawal of the light of their ruler's countenance the mannheimers were compensated in a measure by the establishment among them of a so-called national theater. there was no german nation at the time, but there was a very general interest in the german drama. lessing's famous experiment at hamburg, though it turned out badly, had set people thinking. playwrights and actors were learning to regard themselves no longer as purveyors of mere amusement, but as the dignified representatives of a noble art having boundless possibilities of influence. the public was becoming interested in the principles of dramatic construction and in the criteria of excellence. scholars were beginning to inquire whether the stage might not again become what it had been for the ancient athenians. and so the way had been prepared for a serious conception of the theater and for experiments like that at mannheim. the management of the enterprise was placed in the hands of baron heribert von dalberg, a young nobleman (born in 1750), who had given no evidence of unusual fitness for such an office, but was a connoisseur and a gentleman. he devoted himself zealously to his work and soon made his theater famous. he was courteous and hospitable, kept an eye open for promising talent and enjoyed the role of maecenas. his system provided for regular meetings of his actors, at which plays were discussed, reports rendered and grievances ventilated. for the rest he was not a man of ideas, but a follower of tradition. he disliked to take risks and often missed the mark in his judgment of persons and of plays. he continued until 1803 to act as intendant and occasionally tried his hand at dramatic composition, or the adaptation of a shaksperian play, all told, his services were such that the mannheiniers have deemed him worthy of a statue. among the actors whom baron dalberg's enterprise had assembled at mannheim were three or four of notable talent. thus there was iffland, of the same age as schiller, who was destined to win fame as an actor, playwright and manager. like diderot, iffland believed ardently in the moral mission of the drama. he was himself a man of character who had taken to the stage against the wish of his kinfolk, and now his hobby was to refine the language of the stage and to elevate the actor's profession. he was an industrious and thoughtful player, who gave careful attention to the little matters of mimicry and personation and seldom failed to please. another was beil, a greater actor in point of natural endowment, who relied more upon vigorous realism than upon studied refinements. then there was beck, who was at his best as a portrayer of youthful enthusiasm and sentiment. his nature was akin to schiller's and a warm friendship sprang up between the two. when schiller arrived in mannheim, late in july, 1783, dalberg was in holland. there was nothing going on at the theater, and the sweltering town, deserted by such as could get away, was suffering from an epidemic of malarial fever. but the faithful streicher was there and friend meyer, the manager, and schwan, the publisher, whose vivacious daughter, margarete, gradually kindled in the heart of the new-comer another faint blue flame which he ultimately mistook for love. his first concern was to write to frau von wolzogen, who had loaned him money for his journey, a detailed report of his finances. he was the possessor of fifteen thalers, whereof he had reserved five for the return to bauerbach. his friend meyer had found him a nice place where, by dispensing with breakfast, he could eat, drink and lodge for about two thalers a week. hair-dresser, washerwoman, postman and tobacconist would require, all told, one thaler. so he hoped to keep afloat in the great world at least three weeks, and then,--back to his heart's home in saxony! the letter continues: oh, i shall long to be soon, soon, with you again; and meanwhile, in the midst of my greatest distractions, i shall think of you, my dearest friend. i shall often break away from social circles and, alone in my room, sadly dream myself back with you and weep. continue, my dear, continue to be what you have been hitherto, my first and dearest friend; and let us be, all by ourselves, an example of pure friendship. we will make each other better and nobler. by mutual sympathy and the delicate tie of beautiful emotions we will exhaust the joys of this life and at the last be proud of this our blameless league. take no other friend into your heart. mine remains yours unto death and beyond that, if possible. one sees that the writer of this letter had lived quite long enough in his idyllic retirement, and that his benefactress had judged the case wisely. es bildet ein talent sich in der stille, sich ein charakter in dem strom der welt.[57] we who do not live in an epoch of emotional expansion have the right to get what amusement we can out of this note of high-flown sentimentalism. at the same time its instructive aspect should not be lost sight of. when a youth of twenty-three, battling with the vulgar prose of life, falls into such a tone in writing to a middle-aged lady who has befriended him; when he lets his imagination brood upon the coming luxury of tears and of beautiful emotions; when he is so pathetically eager to reign without a rival in the heart of his friend, and to assure her of his everlasting loyalty in the world to come,--how shall we expect him to express himself when he undertakes to speak the language of strong feeling in works of the imagination? evidently we must be prepared for all things in the way of sentimental extravagance. after two weeks of idle waiting schiller was able to report that dalberg had returned and was showing himself very friendly. the man was 'all fire,'--only it was gunpowder flame that would not last long. the genial intendant insisted that schiller should by all means remain in mannheim. 'fiesco,' now in print as a tragedy, should be put upon the stage at once; 'louise miller' should be taken under consideration, a performance of 'the robbers' be given for the author's special gratification, and so forth. at first schiller was little disposed to bank upon this effusive kindness. his plans went no further than to effect a sale of the stage-rights of his two plays and then to return to bauerbach. but the lures of dalberg finally prevailed and in september he made a contract for a year's employment as dramatist of the mannheim theater. he was to furnish one entirely new play, in addition to those he had on hand, and to have as compensation three hundred florins, the copyright of all the plays and the receipts of a single performance of each of them. for a moment the future looked tolerably bright. he saw in his mind's eye an assured income of more than twelve hundred florins, which would provide amply for his needs and enable him to pay his debts. but his plans went all wrong. in the first place, the pestilent fever, which he fought with giant doses of quinine, proved very intractable and held him in its grip for months. he was unable to work and fell into a sort of mental coma. in a letter of november 13 he describes himself as eating peruvian bark like bread; and six weeks later he was still suffering from the effects of his unlucky midsummer plunge into the miasmatic air of mannheim. in other ways, too, the new situation proved a disappointment. social demands involved him in expenditures far in excess of his modest calculations, while the intervals of relief from physical incapacity were filled with a hundred distractions which left him no time for sustained mental effort. and so he drifted into the winter without accomplishing anything more notable than the final revision of 'fiesco'. about this time he was elected a member of the so-called 'german society', a learned body which enjoyed the protection of the elector. this little honor was highly valued by schiller, since it made him a citizen of the palatinate and gave him an assured social status. on the other hand, his emergence into the light of day as a respectable functionary was not without its disadvantages, since his creditors now became importunate. there were pressing duns from stuttgart and from bauerbach, but the debtor could not pay. he became involved in a painful correspondence with his father, who had undertaken to guarantee a small debt of his son provided that another larger one be paid so and so. when this hope failed, the old captain lost patience and began to deal out counsel, reproof and warning with a lavish hand. he recommended his son to save the pennies and live more economically; to return to medicine; to marry a wife; to remember his creator, and so on. to all of which the perplexed friedrich could only reply with fresh promises, excuses and recommendations of patience. in like manner he put off frau von wolzogen until she began to lose faith in him. a sharp letter from her brought him to his knees with a humble apology, but it was years before he could pay his debt to her. the first performance of 'fiesco', the adaptation of which to the stage had cost its author such a world of trouble, took place on the 12th of january, 1784. as played it differed a good deal from the published version, and not alone with respect to the catastrophe. thus the painful episode of bertha was worked over into something less revoltingly horrible. in the stage version, instead of being brutally violated, she is abducted by a tool of gianettino, but rescued and restored to her home unharmed. with this change made it would seem as if there were less reason than ever for her being cursed and sent to a subterraneous prison-vault. nevertheless verrina's curse was allowed to remain,--chiefly, as one cannot help surmising, that the girl might be rescued with _éclat_ in the fourth act. (the rescue scene in 'the robbers' had been a great success.) it has already been noted that the offensive quarrel between julia and leonora was omitted and that leonora was allowed to live. and there were other such changes. schiller had been impressed by an actor's criticism of his florid and violent language. he accordingly removed or toned down a few blemishes of this kind, but without making a radical revision of the style. even in the stage version there is quite too much of rant and fustian. the mannheimers took but little interest in 'fiesco,'--it was too erudite for them, as schiller explained to reinwald some months later.[58] republican liberty, he went on to say, was in that region a sound without meaning; there was no roman blood in the veins of the pfälzer. in berlin and frankfurt, however, the piece had met with good success. we cannot blame schiller for trying to extract comfort from these bits of evidence that the prophet was not without honor save in his own country, though we may question his implication that republican ideas were just then less rife in the palatinate than in berlin and frankfurt. the fact is that the lover of republican ideas must have been the very person to feel the keenest dissatisfaction with 'fiesco.' where it did succeed, its success was due to causes having little to do with political sentiment. the berlin triumph was equivocal, being the triumph not so much of schiller as of one plümicke, who took high-handed liberties with the original text and made it over, in both language and thought, so as to suit the taste of the berlin actors. this northern version, thus diluted with the water of the spree, was presently published by the enterprising pirate, himburg, and proved a formidable rival of the genuine edition. the play was tried at several theaters and with various endings,--curiously enough plümicke made fiesco commit suicide in the moment of his triumph,--but it never became really popular. it was translated into english in 1796, into french in 1799. much more favorable was the reception given to 'cabal and love', which was first played at mannheim on the 15th of april, 1784.[59] the part of the lackey who describes the horrors attending the exportation of soldiers to america was omitted; the satire was too strong for the politic dalberg, who had all along been troubled by schiller's drastic treatment of princely iniquity and his obvious allusions to well-known persons. even schwan, who was delighted with 'louise miller' from the first and readily undertook to publish it, described its author as an executioner. this time the mannheimers had no difficulty of comprehension and they gave their applause unstintingly. after the great scene in the second act they rose and cheered vociferously,--whereat schiller bowed and felt very happy. 'his manner', says honest streicher, who has left a report of the memorable evening, 'his proud and noble bearing, showed that he had satisfied himself and was pleased to see his merit appreciated.' a few days later the mannheim players repeated their triumph at frankfurt, where schiller was lionized to his heart's content. 'cabal and love' now quickly became a stage favorite. within a few months it was played successfully at nearly all the more important theaters of germany. even stuttgart fell into line, but the duke of württemberg was not pleased, and a memorial of the nobility led to the prohibition of a second performance. at braunschweig it was tried with a happy ending, but this innovation, reasonable as it seems, took no root. a badly garbled english translation by timaeus appeared in 1795; a better one by monk lewis, under the title of 'the minister', in 1797. a french translation by la martellière was hissed off the stage of the théâtre français in 1801. from the minerva press the new play got blame and praise. one writer saw in it the same schiller who was already known as the 'painter of terrible scenes and the creator of shaksperian thoughts'. a berlin critic named moritz, of whom we shall hear later, called the piece a disgrace to the age and wondered how a man could write and print such nonsense. the plot consisted, he declared, of a simpleton's quarrel with providence over a stupid and affected girl. it was full of crass, ribald wit and senseless rodomantade. there were a few scenes of which something might have been made, but 'this writer converted everything into inflated rubbish'. some one taxed moritz with undue severity, whereupon he returned to the attack, insisting that this extravagant, blasphemous and vulgar diction, which purported to be nature rude and strong, was in reality altogether unnatural.[60] and, to be candid, the critic was able to bring together an anthology of quotations which seemed like a rather forcible indictment of schiller's literary taste. what moritz failed to see was that the bad taste was only an excrescence growing upon a very vigorous stock. this was felt by another reviewer who declared that high poetic genius shone forth from every scene of schiller's works. many years later zelter, the friend of goethe, bore witness to the electric effect of the play upon himself and the other excitable youth who saw it in the first days of its popularity. like 'the robbers,' it was a harbinger of the revolution. it seemed to voice the hitherto voiceless woe of the third estate; and just because of that savage force which made it seem absurd to sedate minds, just because it rang out in such shrill and clangorous notes, it has continued to be heard. good taste is a matter of fashion. it is never the most vital quality of literature. if any one should be tempted to think that schiller's youthful ideals of the dramatic art were not sufficiently exalted, he should read the lecture given before the mannheim german society, in june, 1784, on the question: 'what can a good permanent theater really effect?' it is an excellent, thoughtful essay, instinct with lofty idealism and at the same time full of sound observation. setting out from the postulate that the highest aim of all institutions whatsoever is the furtherance of the general happiness, the paper discusses the theater as a public institution of the state. its claims are examined, and the sphere and manner of its influence discussed, along with those of religion and the laws. probably too much is made out of the moral and educational utility of the stage,--so at least it will be apt to seem to an american or an englishman,--but the familiar arguments, the validity of which is now generally recognized in germany, are marshalled with a fine breadth of view and with many felicities of expression. toward the end there is a passage which shows that schiller himself felt the shakiness of the utilitarian argument. he says: 'what i have tried to prove hitherto--that the stage exerts an essential influence upon morals and enlightenment--was doubtful'; and then he goes on to speak of a value not doubtful, namely, its value as a means of refined pleasure. this is the heart of the matter forever and ever; and one could hardly sum up the case more sagely than schiller does in the sentence: 'the stage is the institution in which pleasure combines with instruction, rest with mental effort, diversion with culture; where no power of the soul is put under tension to the detriment of any other, and no pleasure is enjoyed to the damage of the community,' the experience of schiller at mannheim illustrates the higher uses of adversity. had he been well and happy, he might have written his third play, won the good will of dalberg and then stuck fast for years in the palatinate; which would have been a misfortune for him and for german letters. as it was, mannheim gradually became odious to him. he had no buoyancy of spirit. 'god knows i have not been happy here', he wrote to reinwald in may, 1784. his life was full of petty worries and distractions which weighted his imagination as with lead. as his year drew to an end he imagined that he had but to say the word to have his contract with the mannheim theater renewed, but it was not so; dalberg had quietly decided to get rid of him. from _his_ point of view his poet had been a bad investment. schiller had not kept his contract in the matter of the new play; he had done nothing but procrastinate and make excuses. 'don carlos' had not even been begun. there seemed to be no excuse for such dawdling, when a man like iffland could always be relied upon to turn out a fairly acceptable play in a few weeks. no great wonder, therefore, that dalberg lost faith in schiller and concluded that he had exhausted his vein. through a friend he suggested a return to medicine. curiously enough schiller grasped at the idea, professing that a medical career was the one thing nearest his heart. he had long feared, so he wrote, that his inspiration would forsake him if he relied upon literature for his living; but if he could devote himself to it in the intervals of medical practice, good things might be hoped for. he accordingly proposed a renewal of the contract for another year, with the understanding that he devote himself principally to his medical studies to the end of qualifying for the doctor's degree; in the mean time he would undertake to produce one 'great play' and also to edit a dramatic journal. to this amazing proposal dalberg paid no attention; and when the 1st of september arrived schiller's connection with the mannheim theater came to an end. it was a troublous, harassing time for him, that summer of 1784, and the more since the woes of the distracted lover were added to those of the disappointed playwright and the impecunious debtor. a german savant observes that schiller was not, like goethe, a virtuoso in love. and so it certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. he did not lack the data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospective poetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting. in the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage might be the right thing for him; and so, one day in june, 1784, he offered himself to frau von wolzogen for a son-in-law. nothing came of the suggestion; it was only a passing tribute to the abstract goodness of matrimony. about a year later he made, with similar results, an argumentative bid for the hand of margarete schwan. on the aforementioned visit to frankfurt he met sophie albrecht, a melancholy poetess who had sought relief from the tameness of her married life by going upon the stage. of her he wrote shortly afterwards: in the very first hours a firm and warm attachment sprang up between us; our souls understood each other. i am glad and proud that she loves me and that acquaintance with me may perhaps make her happy. a heart fashioned altogether for sympathy, far above the pettiness of ordinary social circles, full of noble, pure feeling for truth and virtue, and admirable even where her sex is not usually so. i promise myself divine days in her immediate society.[61] but all these palpitations were as water unto wine in comparison with his unwholesome passion for charlotte von kalb, whom he also met first in the spring of 1784. this lady, after a lonely and loveless girlhood, in which she had been tossed about as an unwelcome incumbrance from one relation to another, had lately married a baron von kalb. her heart had no part in the marriage, which was arranged by her guardian. in the pursuit of his career her husband left her much to herself. she was an introspective creature, very changeable in her moods and passionately fond of music and poetry. in schiller she found her affinity. he acted first as her guide about mannheim, then as her mentor in matters of literature. they saw much of each other; became intimately confidential and soon were treading a dangerous path,--though not so dangerous, peradventure, as has sometimes been inferred from the two poems, 'radicalism of passion' and 'resignation', which belong to this period. in the first of these poems our old friend, the lover of laura, who is supposed to have married another man in the year 1782, resolves to fight no longer the 'giant-battle of duty'. he apostrophizes virtue and bids her take back the oath that she has extorted from him in a moment of weakness. he will no longer respect the scruples that restrained him when the pitying laura was ready to give all. her marriage vow was itself sinful, and the god of virtue is a detestable tyrant. in the other poem, which is a sort of antidote to the first, we hear of a poet, born in arcadia, who surrendered his claim to earthly bliss on the promise of a reward in heaven. he gave up his all, even his laura, to virtue, though mockers called him a fool for believing in gods and immortality. at last he appears before the heavenly throne to claim his guerdon, but is told by an invisible genius that two flowers bloom for humanity,--hope and enjoyment. who has the one must renounce the other. the high faith that sustained him on earth was his sufficient reward and the fulfillment of eternity's pledge. wer dieser blumen eine brach, begehre die andre schwester nicht. geniesze wer nicht glauben kann. die lehre ist ewig wie die welt. wer glauben kann entbehre. die weltgeschichte ist das weltgericht.[62] when these poems were published, in 1786, their author saw fit to caution the public in a foot-note not to mistake an ebullition of passion for a system of philosophy, or the despair of an imaginary lover for the poet's confession of faith. thus warned one should not be too curious about the reality which is half revealed and half concealed by the verses. enough that it was not altogether a calm, platonic sentiment, and that the torment of it was a factor in that uneasiness which finally became a burning desire to escape from mannheim. and the fates were preparing a way. one day in june, when all was looking dark, schiller received a packet containing an epistolary greeting, an embroidered letter-case and four portrait sketches. the letter was anonymous, but he presently discovered that it came from gottfried körner, a young privat-docent in leipzig, who had united with three friends in sending this token of regard to a suabian poet whom they had found reason to like. schiller did not answer immediately and the skies grew darker still. his relations with the mannheim theater were presently strained to the point of disgust by the production of a farce in which he was satirized. he was in terrible straits for money. to have something to do, after he was set adrift by dalberg, he decided to go ahead with his project of a dramatic journal. an attractive prospectus for the _rhenish thalia_ was issued, and he began to prepare for the first number, which was to contain an installment of 'don carlos'. the advance subscriptions fell far short of his sanguine hopes. in these occupations the time passed until december. then one day he penned an answer to the leipzig letter. it was a turning-point in his destiny. a correspondence sprang up which presently convinced him that where these people were, there he must be. toward the end of the year there came another glint of good-will from the north. the duke of weimar happened to be visiting at the neighboring darmstadt, and through frau von kalb schiller procured an introduction and an invitation to read the beginning of 'don carlos'. the result was the title of weimar councillor. this was very pleasant indeed; for while it put no florins in his purse, it gave him an honorable status in the german world. he had been cast off by a prince of the barbarians to be taken up by _the_ prince of the greeks! henceforth he was in a sense the colleague of goethe and wieland. he began to speak of the duke of weimar as _his_ duke, and to indulge in day-dreams concerning the little city of the muses in thüringen. for the rest there was an element of fate's amusing irony in the new title, seeing that he had just announced himself, in the prospectus of the _rhenish thalia_, as a literary free-lance who served no prince, but only the public. the announcement contained a sketch of his life and a confession of his sins,--which he laid at the door of the stuttgart academy. 'the robbers', he declared, had cost him home and country; but now he was free, and his heart swelled at the thought of wearing no other fetter than the verdict of the public, and appealing to no other throne than the human soul. owing to various delays the first number of the new journal did not appear until the spring of 1785, and by that time schiller was all ready for his flight northward. matters had continued to go badly with him. on the 22nd of february he wrote to korner, 'in a nameless oppression of the heart', as follows: i can stay no longer in mannheim. for twelve days i have carried the decision about with me like a resolution to leave the world. people, circumstances, earth and sky, are repulsive to me. i have not a soul to fill the void in my heart--not a friend, man or woman; and what might be dear to me is separated from me by conventions and circumstances.... oh, my soul is athirst for new nourishment, for better people, for friendship, affection and love. i must come to you; must learn, in your immediate society and in intimate relations with you, once more to enjoy my own heart, and to bring my whole being to a livelier buoyancy. my poetic vein is stagnant; my heart has dried up toward my associations here. you must warm it again. with you i shall be doubly, trebly, what i have been hitherto; and more than all that, my dearest friends, i shall be happy. i have never been so yet. weep for me that i must make this confession. i have not been happy; for fame and admiration and all the other concomitants of authorship do not weigh as much as one moment of love and friendship. they starve the heart. to the worldly-wise such a perfervid sight-draft upon the bank of love, made after a few weeks of epistolary acquaintance, will no doubt seem a little risky. one is reminded of goethe's tasso, impulsively offering his friendship to a cooler man and getting the reply: in einem augenblicke forderst du was wohlbedächtig nur die zeit gewährt.[63] but this time schiller's instinct had guided him aright. körner was no antonio, and he did not recoil even when he learned that his new friend was very much in need of money and would not be able to leave mannheim, unless a leipzig publisher could be found who would take over his magazine and advance a few pounds upon its uncertain prospects. this was easily arranged, for korner was well-to-do and had himself lately acquired an interest in the publishing business of göschen at leipzig. göschen took the _thalia_ (dropping the 'rhenish'), schiller paid his more pressing debts, and early in april was on his way to leipzig, panting for the new friends as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. footnotes: [footnote 57: a talent forms itself in solitude, a character in the flowing tide of life. --_goethes 'tasso'.] [footnote 58: letter of may 5, 1784.] [footnote 59: but this performance was not the first in order of time. 'cabal and love' had already been played on the 13th of april by grossmann's company at frankfurt. grossmann was an intelligent theatrical man, who had conceived a liking for schiller; only he wished that the 'dear fiery man' would be a little more considerate of stage limitations.] [footnote 60: moritz's critique is reprinted in j. braun's "schiller und goethe im urteile ihrer zeitgenossen", i, 103.] [footnote 61: from the letter of may 5, quoted above.] [footnote 62: in bulwer's translation: "he who has plucked the one, resigned must see the sister's forfeit bloom: let unbelief enjoy--belief must be all to the chooser;--the world's history is the world's judgment doom."] [footnote 63: thou askest in a single moment that which only time can give with cautious hand.] chapter viii the boon of friendship wem der grosse wurf gelungen, eines freundes freund zu sein,... mische seinen jubel ein. --'_song to joy_'. gottfried körner, father of the more famous theodor, was some three years older than schiller and belonged to an opulent and distinguished family. his father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughter of a well-to-do leipzig merchant. the boy had grown up under austere religious influences and then drifted far in the direction of liberalism. after a university career devoted at first to the humanities and then to law, he had travelled extensively in foreign countries, and then returned to leipzig, full of ambition but undecided as to his future course. here, in 1778, he became acquainted with minna stock, the daughter of an engraver who had once been the teacher of goethe. stock died in 1773, leaving a widow and two daughters to battle with poverty. the elder daughter, dora, inherited something of her father's vivacious humor and artistic talent, while the younger and handsomer, minna, was of a more domestic temper. when körner fell in love with the amiable minna and wished to marry her, he met with opposition in his own family, who thought that the 'engraver's mamsell' was not good enough for him. this little touch of adversity converted him from a gentleman of leisure and a browsing philosopher into a man with a purpose in life. he set about making himself independent of the family wealth. to this end he offered himself as a privat-docent in law at the leipzig university. when this expedient failed him through lack of students, he began to practice and soon received an appointment which took him to dresden. this in 1783. dresden now became his official residence, but he made frequent visits to his betrothed in leipzig, and during one of these his memorable letter to schiller was indited. the other member of the quartette was ludwig huber, at that time the accepted lover of dora stock. huber was three years younger than schiller,--an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who had his occasional promptings of literary ambition. but his soarings were mere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lacked solid ability. a doting mother had watched and coddled him until in practical affairs he was comically helpless. as the futility of his character became more apparent with the lapse of time, he lost the esteem of his friends, and the engagement with dora stock was broken off. so far as schiller is concerned, the friendship of huber was a passing episode of no particular importance. early in the year 1785 körner lost both his parents and found himself the possessor of a considerable fortune. there was now no further obstacle to his marriage; so the time was fixed for the wedding and he set about preparing a home for his bride. thus it came about that when schiller arrived in leipzig, on the 17th of april, 1785,--mud, snow and inundations had made the journey desperately tedious,--he did not at once meet the man whom he most cared to know. huber and the two ladies, who seem to have expected a wild, dishevelled genius, were astonished to see a mild-eyed, bashful man, who bore little resemblance to karl moor and needed time to thaw up. but the stranger soon felt at home. he had explained to huber minutely how he wished to live. he would no longer keep his own establishment,--he could manage an entire dramatic conspiracy more easily than his own housekeeping. at the same time he did not wish to live alone. i need for my inward happiness [he wrote] a right, true friend who is always at hand like my angel; to whom i can communicate my budding ideas and emotions in the moment of their birth, without writing letters or making visits. even the trivial circumstance that my friend lives outside my four walls; that i must go through the street to reach him, that i must change my dress, or the like, kills the enjoyment of the moment. my train of thought is liable to be rent in pieces before i can get to him.... i cannot live parterre, nor in the attic, and i should not like to look out upon a churchyard. i love men and the thronging crowd. if i cannot arrange it so that we (i mean the five-parted clover-leaf) may eat together, then i might resort to the table d'hôte of an inn, for i had rather fast than not dine in company.[64] it is clear that, notwithstanding experiences which might have embittered a less genial nature, schiller was in no danger of becoming a misanthrope. for him the throng upon the street was not the madding crowd of the english poet, nor the 'cursed race' of frederick the great, but an inspiration; a spectacle to keep the heart warm and foster the sense of brotherhood. he felt the need of men, however shabbily they might treat him. and men enough were at hand; for the leipzig fair was then on, and the town was full of strangers who were eager to gape at the author of 'the robbers', to be introduced to him, to invite him here and there. so for a week he floated with the current of casual dissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy of lonesomeness,--four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were paired lovers,--he penned a missive which might have changed much in his future career: he sent to christian schwan a formal proposal for the hand of margarete. with characteristic optimism he urged that fortune had at last turned favorably. he had good prospects. he proposed to work hard upon 'don carlos' and the _thalia_, and meanwhile quietly to return to medicine. wherefore he now made bold to express a hope that he had long cherished but had not dared to utter. the sequelae of this wooing have never been cleared up in detail. schiller's letter as preserved bears a marginal note by schwan to the effect that laura in the poem 'resignation' was no other than his eldest daughter. 'i gave her this letter to read', the note says, 'and told schiller to apply directly to her. why nothing came of the affair has remained a riddle to me. happy my daughter would not have been with schiller.' the annotation is not dated. the identification of laura with margarete is obviously wrong. was schwan's memory also at fault? did he imagine, long after the fact, that he had actually taken what must have seemed to him, when schiller had become a famous poet, the reasonable course to have pursued? did he withhold the letter too long and then show it? or was margarete herself disinclined,--piqued perhaps by schiller's neglect of her, or by his passion for charlotte von kalb? or did schiller's own courage fail him after he had received a hint of favor? a letter to körner, written may 7, tells of pleasant news from mannheim, and shortly afterward a rumor was in circulation that schiller was about to marry a rich wife. the probability is that neither party was more than half inclined to the match. the blue flame perished naturally for lack of fuel. early in may, following the custom of well-to-do leipzigers, schiller sought refuge from the incipient summer heat of the city by taking rooms in the suburban village (such it was then) of gohlis. here, in a little second-story chamber, which was provided with an infinitesimal bed-room, he lived some four months,--happy months, in the main, even if the famous 'song to joy', which local tradition ascribes to this time and place, was in fact written a little later in dresden. various friends were at hand. besides huber there was göschen, with whom he was soon on terms of intimacy. the stock sisters,--'our dear girls', as he calls them in a letter to the absent korner,--had likewise quartered themselves in gohlis; and so had dr. albrecht and his wife, sophie, the actress. these with one or two others were enough for converse and for jollity; and there were merry evenings, with wine and talk, and cards and skittles and nonsense. though ordinarily he 'joked wi' difficulty', schiller could be jovial enough in a company of congenial spirits. nevertheless there was but little of the bohemian about him. that dignified seriousness which pervades all his later writings, and gave to goethe the impression of a man dwelling habitually above the plane of vulgar things, was beginning even now to characterize him as a social being. while living at gohlis he received a visit from moritz, the man who had written so savagely of 'cabal and love'. if ever an author has been justified in giving the cut direct to a pestilent reviewer, this was the occasion. but schiller received his visitor with suave courtesy; an interchange of views followed and the two men parted with embraces and protestations of friendly esteem. schiller was not a good hater, except of hate. his nature craved love and friendship. he was eager to learn of his critics and could not long cherish resentment over an honest expression of opinion. besides this he had now come to feel that his early writings were anything but invulnerable. notwithstanding his promise of steady industry, schiller accomplished but little during his sojourn at gohlis. it was the old story: there were too many distractions, too many confusing images of what might be done. the scheme of an antidote to 'the robbers', in the shape of a moral sequel, gradually dropped out of view, along with the medical studies. the _thalia_, originally planned with reference to the public at mannheim, refused to bear transplanting to another soil without a season of wilting. instead of manuscript for the second number, göschen was obliged to content himself for several months with excuses for postponement. and as for 'don carlos', the conception had so changed with the lapse of time that its author felt at a loss how to manage it. the play, with its wonderful pair of dreamers, was waiting for the inspiration of a real friendship at dresden. long before they met in the body schiller and körner had given expression to their mutual trust in language of romantic enthusiasm. on the 2nd of may körner wrote at length of his own life, character and aspirations. the letter reveals a noble nature conscious of an exceptional indebtedness to fortune and eager to pay the debt by solid work for mankind, but lacking the ability to decide and execute. körner evidently felt that he was in some danger of becoming an intellectual sybarite, and he hoped that schiller's example would save him from this danger by spurring him to literary effort. in his reply schiller expresses his admiration of a character to whom fortune's favor means not, as for most men, the opportunity of enjoyment, but the duty of more strenuous living; then he sends a jubilant godspeed to the 'dear wanderer who wishes to accompany him in such faithful, brotherly fashion on his romantic journey to truth, fame and happiness.' the letter continues: i now feel realized in us what as poet i but prophetically imagined. brotherhood of spirits is the most infallible key to wisdom. separately we can do nothing.... do not fear from this time forth for the endless duration of our friendship. its materials are the fundamental impulses of the human soul. its territory is eternity; its _non plus ultra_ the godhead. then, as if momentarily abashed by his own extravagance of expression, he protests that his _schwärmerei_, if such it be, is nothing but a 'joyful paroxysm anticipating our future greatness'. for his part, he would not 'exchange one such moment for the highest triumph of cold reason'. enthusiasm, he declares, is the greatest thing in life. the two men did not see each other until july, when a meeting was arranged at an interjacent village, to which schiller rode out with the leipzig friends. the next day he wrote a letter to körner, who had returned to dresden, describing an incident of the return journey,--a letter so full of instruction with regard to the schiller of this period that it deserves to be quoted at some length: somehow we came to speak of plans for the future. my heart grew warm. it was not idle dreaming. i had a solid philosophic assurance of that which i saw lying before me in the glorious perspective of time. in a melting mood of shame, such as does not depress but rouses to manly effort, i looked back into the past, which i had misused through the most unfortunate waste of energy. i felt that nature had endowed me with powers on a bold plan, and that her intention with me (perhaps a great intention) had so far been defeated. half of this failure was due to the insane method of my education, and the adverse humor of fate; the other and larger half, however, to myself. deeply, my best of friends, did i feel all that, and in the general fiery ferment of my emotions, head and heart united in a herculean vow to make good the past and begin anew the noble race to the highest goal. my feeling became eloquent and imparted itself to the others with electric power. o how beautiful, how divine, is the contact of two souls that meet on the way to divinity! thus far not a syllable had been spoken of you, but i read your name in huber's eyes and involuntarily it came to my lips. our eyes met and our holy purpose fused with our holy friendship. it was a mute hand-clasp--to remain faithful to the resolution of this moment; to spur each other on to the goal, to admonish and encourage, and not to halt save at the bourne where human greatness ends.... our conversation had taken this turn when we got out for breakfast. we found wine in the inn, and your health was drunk. we looked at each other silently; our mood was that of solemn worship and each one of us had tears in his eyes, which he tried to keep back.... i thought of the beginning of the eucharist: 'do this as often as ye drink in memory of me.' i heard the organ and stood before the altar. suddenly i remembered that, it was your birthday. unwittingly we had celebrated it with a holy rite. dearest friend, had you seen your glorification in our faces, heard it in our tear-choked voices, at that moment you would have forgotten even your betrothed; you would have envied no happy mortal under the sun. heaven has strangely brought us together, but in our friendship it shall have wrought a miracle. dim foreboding led me to expect much, very much of you, when i first decided to come to leipzig; but providence has more than fulfilled the promise, and has vouchsafed to me in your arms a happiness of which i could not form an image. it tends to provoke a smile to read on in this letter and find it suddenly turning from such ecstasies to a straightforward confession that the writer is embarrassed for lack of ready cash. he had met with disappointments. the mannheim people had not treated him handsomely, the subscribers to the _thalia_ were delinquent, and so forth. could not göschen be persuaded to undertake a new and authentic edition of the published plays and to advance a sum of money on the prospects? körner's reply was prompt and characteristic. he enclosed a draft for current expenses, promised more against the time of need and bade his friend have no further solicitude about money. he knew very well, so he averred with politic delicacy, that schiller could easily earn enough by working for money; but for a year at least he was to let himself be relieved of that degrading necessity. they would keep an account and all should be paid back with interest in the time of abundance; but for the present no more of pecuniary anxieties! schiller, to whose brief experience in a selfish world this sort of conduct was something new, replied that he would not entrench himself in a false pride, as the great rousseau had done on a similar occasion, but would accept the generous offer; this being the best possible expression of his gratitude. korner was pleased to have the business settled by letter. 'i have always despised money', he wrote, 'to a degree that it disgusts me to talk about it with souls that are dear to me. i attach no importance to actions that are natural to people of our sort, and which you would perform for me were the conditions reversed.' it was now arranged that after körner's marriage schiller should make his home in dresden. the eagerly awaited migration took place in september, and schiller entered the saxon capital, which was to be his home for the next two years, in a flutter of joyous anticipation. the körners quartered him in their charming suburban cottage at loschwitz, in the loveliest region he had known since his childhood. the guest, who had seen but little of the quiet joys of domestic life and was now received on the footing of an adopted brother, felt very happy. his intercourse with körner gave him the very kind of intellectual stimulus that he most needed. körner was at this time the more solid character of the two. he had seen more of the world. while capable of warm affection and strong enthusiasm, he had adopted, a profession which inevitably gave to his thoughts a practical bent. besides this he had taken up the study of kant with great earnestness and was thereby more than ever disposed to see all questions in the white light of pure reason. he was thus the very man to pour a cool mephistophelean spray upon schiller's emotional fervors. one can easily imagine the general drift of the philosophical discussions that took place during the lengthening evenings of september, 1785, when we find schiller expressing himself to the absent huber in such language as this: the boyhood of our minds is now over, i imagine, and likewise the honeymoon of our friendship. let our hearts now cleave to each other in manly affection, gush little and feel much; plan little and act the more fruitfully. enthusiasm and ideals have sunk incredibly in my estimation. as a rule we make the mistake of estimating the future from a momentary feeling of enhanced power, and painting things in the color of our transient exaltation of feeling. i praise enthusiasm, and love the divine ethereal power of kindling to a great resolution. it pertains to the better man, but it is not all of him. but life at loschwitz was not lived altogether in the upper altitudes of solemn philosophy. from this period dates the well-known 'petition',--one of the few glints of playful humor to be found among schiller's poems. he had been left alone one day with 'don carlos', and he found his meditations disturbed by the operations of the washerwoman. the result was a string of humorous stanzas bewailing the fate of a poet who is compelled by his vocation to fix his mind upon the love ecstasies of princess eboli, and listen at the same time to the swashy music of the wash-tub: i feel my love-lorn lady's hurt, my fancy waxes hotter; i hear,--the sound of sock and shirt a-swishing in the water. vanished the dream--the faery chimes- my princess, pax vobiscum! the devil take these wash-day rimes, i will no longer risk 'em. when the körners occupied their winter residence in the city, schiller found rooms hard by, and was presently joined by huber, who had secured a position in the diplomatic service. the time was now ripe for that jubilant song, more frequently set to music than any other of schiller's poems, wherein we are introduced to a mystic brotherhood, worshiping in fiery intoxication at the shrine of the celestial priestess, joy, whose other name is sympathy. a mystic brotherhood; yet not an exclusive one, since the fraternal kiss is--freely offered to every mortal on the round earth who has found one soul to love. the lines glorify joy, just as the odes to laura had previously glorified love, as a mystic attraction pervading all nature and leading up to god; as that which holds the stars in their course, inspires the searcher after truth, sustains the martyr and gives a pledge of immortality. wherefore the millions are exhorted to endure patiently for the better world that is coming, when a great god will reward. anger and vengeance are to be forgotten, and our mortal foe forgiven. after these rapturous strophes, culminating in a health to the good spirit above, one is just a little surprised to hear the singer urge, with unabated ardor, a purely militant ideal of life,--firm courage in heavy trial, succor to the oppressed, manly pride in the presence of kings, and death to the brood of liars. a final strophe, urging grace to the criminal on the scaffold, general forgiveness of sinners and the abolition of hell, was rejected by schiller, who later characterized the song as a 'bad poem'. the 'song to joy' sprang from noble sentiment and has the genuine lyric afflatus; but its author had not yet emerged from that nebulous youthful sentimentalism according to which joy, sympathy, love, friendship, virtue, happiness, god, were all very much the same thing. and the thought is a trifle incoherent. if the good spirit above the stars is to pardon everybody, what becomes of the incentive to a militant life? why should one strive and cry and get into a feaze about tyrants and liars? the 'song to joy', with music by körner, was published in the second number of the _thalia_, which, after hanging fire for months, finally appeared in february, 1786. it contained also the poems 'radicalism of passion' and 'resignation', and a fresh installment of 'don carlos'. of the prose contributions the most important was the story, 'the criminal from disgrace', later called 'the criminal from lost honor'. it was based upon a true story, got from professor abel in stuttgart, concerning the life and death of a notorious suabian robber, named schwan, who was put to death in 1760. schiller changed the name to christian wolf and built out of the ugly facts a strumous tale of criminal psychology,--the autopsy of a depraved soul, as he called it. his hero is a sort of vulgarized karl moor; that is, an enemy of society who might have been its friend if things had not happened so and so. the successive steps of his descent from mild resentment to malignant fury, libertinism and crime, and the reaction of his own increasing depravity upon his own mind, are described in a manner which is fairly interesting from a literary point of view, whatever a modern expert criminologist might think of it. the _crux_ of the ever difficult problem,--the precise division of responsibility between society and the wretch whom it spews out of its mouth,--is brought clearly into view, but without any attempt at an exact solution. the tale is not a homily, but an object-lesson designed to show how things go. it is too slight an affair to be worthy of extended comment, but it shows schiller becoming interested in the psychological analysis of conduct. moral goodness and badness are beginning to appear less simple concepts, and the tangle of human motive more intricate, than he had supposed. along with these contributions there also appeared in the second number of the _thalia_ a translation of the 'précis historique', prefixed by mercier to his recently published 'portrait de philippe second'. the 'portrait' itself was a dramatic picture, in fifty-two scenes, without division into acts. the work of mercier, who paints the spanish king in the darkest possible colors, furnished a few hints for 'don carlos', but its influence was not very great. what chiefly concerns us here is to note schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. in the spring of 1786, during an absence of the körners which deprived him of his wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. letter after letter tells of laziness and mental vacuity. as he could do nothing else he took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'really', he wrote on the 15th of april: really i must turn over a new leaf with my reading. i feel with pain, that i still have such an astonishing amount to learn; that i must sow in order to reap.... history is becoming dearer to me every day. i have this week read a history of the thirty years' war, and my head is still quite feverish from it. that this epoch of the greatest national misery should have been at the same time the most brilliant epoch of human power! what a number of great men came forth from this night! i could wish that for the ten years past i had done nothing but study history. i believe i should have become a very different fellow. do you think i shall yet be able to make up for lost time? one sees from this language by what particular hook the study of history had taken hold of schiller's mind, and what kind of profit he was promising himself from further reading. he was interested in the evolution of great men. for him, as for the poets always, from homer down, history resolved itself into the doings of the leaders. for the time being, however, the new zeal seems to have been a mere flash in the pan, that set nothing in motion. nor was körner able, for some time to come, to induce his friend to make a serious study of kant's 'critique', though every third word between them was of philosophy. nevertheless their philosophic debates did bear literary fruit. the third number of the _thalia_, which came out in may, contained the first installment of the 'philosophical letters', a fictitious correspondence between two friends, julius and raphael, who have arrived by different routes at the same way of thinking, and are resolved to tell the world how it all came about. julius is schiller; raphael is körner, who actually contributed one of the later letters. we learn that julius was passing through a spiritual crisis. he was happy but he had not reflected. the little world of his rapturous emotions sufficed him. now, however, raphael has enlightened his mind, made him a citizen of the world and taught him to comprehend the all-sufficient majesty of reason; but he has won enlightenment at the expense of peace. he is miserable and demands back his soul. raphael rebukes him gently for his faint-heartedness and asks for a history of his thinking. so julius rummages through his papers and sends on a somewhat elaborate 'theosophy of julius',--a sort of _précis_, it would seem, of schiller's earlier views. it is religious mysticism set forth with warm eloquence. the universe is a thought of god. the highest aim of thinking is to read the divine plan. all spirits are attracted by perfection. the supreme perfection is god, of whom love is an emanation. love is gain; hate is loss; pardon, the recovery of lost property; misanthropy a prolonged suicide; egoism the utmost poverty. if every man loved all mankind, every man would possess the world. if we comprehend perfection it becomes ours. if we plant beauty and joy, beauty and joy shall we reap. if we think clearly we shall love fervently. to this 'theosophy' julius adds a few comments, evidently of later origin, which show that he has now become aware of its intellectual inadequacy. still he does not repudiate it. he thinks it may do for a doctrine, if one's nature is adapted to it.--herewith, so far as schiller was concerned, the 'philosophic letters' came to an end; but in the spring of 1788, körner surprised him with a letter by raphael, which is, philosophically speaking, by far the best of the entire collection. but this book is not concerned with the writings of körner. ere the third number of the _thalia_ appeared it had become evident that the enterprise would not be profitable, and its perplexed editor was in doubt whether to continue it. he finally decided to go on. when the fourth number came out, early in 1787, it contained the beginning of a novel, 'the ghostseer', wherein a mysterious sicilian, and a still more mysterious armenian, dog the footsteps of a german prince von ---living at venice, and do various things suggesting a connection with occult powers. the first installment of the story broke off at a very exciting point,--just when the sicilian has produced his amazing ghost-scene, but has not yet been unmasked as a vulgar fraud. schiller evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. he wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of cagliostro. so he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan and did not himself know where he would bring up. the literary merits of 'the ghostseer', schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose fiction, will come up for consideration in connection with the conclusion, or rather the continuation, which he published some two years later, when he had left dresden to seek his fortune in weimar. even now the necessity of seeking his fortune somewhere was daily becoming more imperious. the _thalia_ did not pay, though the critics spoke well of it, and he could not live forever upon körner's friendly advances of money. the sense of his dependence often galled him; and yet when a proposal, in itself highly attractive, came to him from a distant city, he could not pluck up courage to leave his friend. friedrich schröder, the greatest german actor of the time, wished to draw him to hamburg. schiller looked up to schröder with genuine admiration and speculatively promised himself great gain from association with 'the one man in germany who could realize all his ideas of art.' in mannheim,--so he wrote in october, 1786,--he had lost all his enthusiasm for the theater; it was now beginning to revive, but he shuddered at the treatment to which playwrights were exposed by theatrical people. moreover he was living at dresden 'in the bosom of a family to which he had become necessary'. so nothing came of the negotiations except the preparation of a stage version of 'don carlos' for the hamburg theater. an amusing glimpse of domestic conditions in the körner household is afforded by schiller's dramatic skit, entitled 'körner's forenoon'. it belongs apparently to the year 1787, but was not published until 1862. the busy councillor of the dresden consistory sees a little leisure before him and squares off at his desk for a solid forenoon's work. he begins by ordering his man to shave him. then he is interrupted by a procession of callers,--schiller, in various rôles, and minna, and dorchen, and professor becker and others--who keep the stream of babble flowing until one o'clock. körner is too late for the consistory and all that he has accomplished is to get shaved. the piece is a slight affair, but there is enough of solemn fun in it to make one wish that its author had seen fit to work his lighter vein more frequently. about the time when this facetious bagatelle was penned, or a little earlier perhaps, schiller became the hero of a comedy in real life. in the winter of 1787 he attended a masked ball where he met 'a pretty domino--a plump voluptuous maiden,--who fascinated him. her name was henriette von arnim. he followed up the acquaintance and was soon quite seriously interested. as the arnim family did not enjoy the best of reputations, the körners were annoyed at schiller's seeming lack of connoisseurship in women. they contrived to let him know that on the evenings when henriette was not at home to him she was at home to a certain earthy count waldstein, or to a certain jew banker, as the case might be. this was painful, but not immediately decisive, and miserable days ensued. in the spring he was persuaded to try a few weeks' outing in the country. here he was at first frightfully lonesome,--a dejected robinson crusoe, who could neither work nor amuse himself. to his pathetic demands for reading-matter his friends replied with malicious humor by sending him goethe's 'werther' and laclos's 'liaisons dangereuses'. after a while the arnims followed him, but presently the count came also; and then the course of true love, thus awkwardly bifurcated, was more troubled than ever. after henriette's return to dresden there was an interchange of letters, wherein love fought a losing battle with doubt and suspicion. this half-year of amatory perturbation was of course unfavorable to literary labor. no further numbers of the _thalia_ appeared, and 'the misanthrope', a new play of excellent promise, made no progress. but 'don carlos' did at last get itself completed--after a fashion. it was published early in the summer. and now, with this burden lifted, the time seemed to have arrived for carrying out the long-cherished plan of a visit to weimar. who could tell what might come of it? körner was just as loyal as ever, but he was also wise enough to respect his friend's longing for a more assured and less dependent existence. and so in july schiller set out for thüringen,--to be seen no more in dresden save as an occasional visitor. but the letters he wrote to the noble-minded friend who had done and been so much for him constitute, for several years to come, our best source of information concerning his outward fortune and his inner history. before we follow him to weimar, however, it will be in order to consider the play which remains as the most important achievement of his dresden period. footnotes: [footnote 64: letter of march 25, 1785.] chapter ix don carlos arm in arm mit dir, so fordr' ich mein jahrhundert in die schranken. _'don carlos'_. with the publication of 'don carlos' schiller's literary reputation entered upon a new phase. hitherto he had been known as a playwright in whom the passion for strong effects often obscured the sense of artistic fitness. of his dramatic power there could be no doubt, but had he the higher gift of the great poet? would he ever be able to clothe his conceptions in a form that would appeal permanently to the general heart because of high and rare artistic excellence? doubts of this kind were quite justifiable up to the year 1787, but they were set at rest by 'don carlos'. however vulnerable it may be as a poetic totality, it has passages that are magnificent. its sonorous verse, wedded to a lofty argument and freighted with the noblest idealism of the century, made sure its author's title to a place in the walhalla of the poets. except 'wallenstein' no other work of schiller cost him such long and strenuous toil. 'don carlos', like goethe's 'faust', is a stratified deposit. the time that went to the making of it, only four years in all, was comparatively short, but it was for schiller a time of rapid change; and the play, intensely subjective from the first, participated in the ripening process. the result is a certain lack of artistic congruity. schiller himself, always his own best critic, felt this and frankly admitted it in the first of his 'letters upon don carlos'. it may be [he wrote] that in the first [three] acts i have aroused expectations which the last do not fulfill. st. réal's novel, perhaps also my own remarks upon it in the first number of the _thalia_, may have suggested to the reader a standpoint from which the work can no longer be regarded. during the period of elaboration, which on account of divers interruptions was a pretty long time, much changed within myself.... what had mainly attracted me at first, attracted me less later on, and at last hardly at all. new ideas that came into my mind crowded out the earlier ones. carlos himself had declined in my favor, for no other reason perhaps than that i had outgrown him, and for the opposite reason the marquis of posa had taken his place. so it came about that i brought a very different heart to the fourth and fifth acts. yet the first three were already in the hands of the public, and the plan of the whole could not be recast; i had either to suppress the piece entirely (for which very few of my readers would have thanked me), or else to fit the second half to the first as best i could. let us look somewhat closely at the process of evolution here alluded to in general terms. the original impulse came from a work of romantic fiction, the 'dom carlos' of st. réal, which was first read by schiller in the summer of 1782 and drew from him the comment that the story 'deserved the brush of a dramatist'. st. réal's novel begins by telling how charles the fifth arranged, just before his abdication, that his grandson carlos should some day marry elizabeth of valois: and how afterwards philip determined to take the french princess for his own wife instead of leaving her to his son. meanwhile, however, by much gazing at the picture of his betrothed, young carlos had learned to love her, and she in turn had conceived for him a 'disposition to love rather than a veritable passion'. arrived at the spanish court the young queen wins all hearts; even the white-haired philip falls in love with her, though he treats her with stately reserve in the presence of others and surrounds her with the restraints of spanish etiquette. thus the queen comes to feel that she possesses 'only the body of her husband, his soul being filled with the designs of his ambition and the meditation of his policy'. as for carlos, his love-lorn eyes soon betray to her how it is with him, but she can only pity him, though she secretly returns his love, for she is as virtuous as she is beautiful. not so the princess eboli, wife of ruy gomez, the tutor of carlos. having tried to win the love of the king and found her designs thwarted by the queen's beauty, eboli makes advances to prince carlos, who lets her know that he cannot love her and thus makes her angry. in this mood she bestows her favor upon the king's half-brother, don juan of austria, who is also enamored of the queen and has been watching carlos suspiciously. having thus made enemies of eboli and don juan, carlos next draws upon himself the hatred of the powerful duke of alva, of ruy gomez, and of the inquisition. this he does by his outspoken criticism of their doings and his threats of punishment to be meted out to them when he shall have become king. anxious for their own future alva and ruy gomez conspire together and cause suspicions of carlos to be whispered in the ear of the king. at first philip is not greatly excited. when carlos, importuned by count egmont, asks for a commission to the netherlands, philip does not refuse, but declares that he will go too and share the peril of his son. this, however, is a mere ruse to gain time. while they are waiting, the king meanwhile feigning illness, carlos communicates freely with the queen through his bosom friend, the marquis of posa. hearing of this intimacy the king now becomes really jealous, but of posa not of carlos. maddened by suspicion he has the marquis murdered on the street and employs eboli to watch the queen. after this carlos resolves upon independent action and begins to negotiate with the netherlanders. his operations are watched and reported by his enemies, and just as he is about to leave spain he is arrested. the king places his case before the holy office, which decrees that he must die. being allowed to choose the manner of his death he opens his veins while bathing. with the actual don carlos, whose story bears but little resemblance to that of st. réal's hero, we are not particularly concerned. the french abbé's drift is to exalt the french princess and to give a telling picture of a pair of high-minded lovers who are brought to their death by a complicate intrigue begotten of jealousy, political hatred and religious fanaticism. after the death of carlos the queen is poisoned and then, one after the other, all the conspirators meet with poetic justice. "ainsi", the abbé concludes, "furent expiées les morts à jamais déplorables d'un prince magnanime, et de la plus belle et de la plus vertueuse princesse qui fut jamais. c'est ainsi que leurs ombres infortunées furent enfin pleinement appaisées par les funestes destinées de tous les complices de leur trépas." st. réal's novel was published in 1672 and has been a favorite quarry of the dramatist. of the plays of otway (1676) and campistron (1685) schiller had no knowledge, nor did he receive any suggestions from the fierce and gloomy 'filippo' of alfieri, which appeared in 1783. he approached the subject in his own way and his first thought was simply to dramatize st. réal, who is mainly interested in the love tragedy and writes as a literary artist rather than as a political or religious pamphleteer. we possess a prose outline[65] of 'don carlos', written probably at bauerbach, which shows exactly how the theme first bit into schiller's mind. the exposition was to show the secret passion of the lovers and the dangers threatening them from the jealousy of philip, the political hostility of the grandees and the malice of the slighted eboli. in the third act the king would become madly suspicious and resolve upon his son's death. then there was to be a gleam of hope: the ambition of carlos would awaken and begin to prevail over his love, while posa would divert the king's suspicion to himself and fall a sacrifice to friendship. then a new danger would arise: the king would discover don carlos in a seeming 'rebellion', and decree his death. the dying declaration of carlos would prove his innocence and the king would be left alone to mourn the havoc he had wrought and to punish the conspirators who had deceived him. this sketch promises, it will be observed, not a political tragedy, but, as schiller himself afterwards phrased it, a 'domestic tragedy in a royal household'. springing up from the same soil and at the same time as 'cabal and love', it was to be much the same sort of play. in both a pair of high-minded lovers belonging together by natural affinity, but separated by artificial barriers; the rights of passion battling in the one case with social prejudice, in the other with the law of rome and the malice of courtiers; in both a court plot against the lovers; the hero beset by a fair sinner who receives him in her private room, lays siege to him, and is angered by the slighting of her love; in both a tyrannical and headstrong father at enmity with his son. of the political ideas which the world associates with 'don carlos' there is here no adumbration. we hear nothing of the netherlanders, nor of the inquisition, nor of the rights of man. posa is only a friend of carlos, not the ambassador of all mankind, and there is no room for his golden dreams of philanthropic statesmanship. and yet it is worth noticing that in three points (all in the third act) schiller adds to his french source: carlos's ambition was to waken and prevail over his love, posa was to sacrifice himself, and the lovers were to rise superior to their passion. however, no sooner did our playwright address himself seriously to his task than his imagination began to break over the bounds he had set for it. even at bauerbach, as his letters show, his mind was occupied with the thought of 'avenging mankind' by scourging the gloomy despotism of philip, the monstrous cruelty of alva, the dark intrigues of the jesuits and the hideous crimes of the inquisition. that he made any progress in the spring of 1783, further than to cogitate upon his general plan and to fall in love with his hero, is not probable; nor do his mannheim letters allude to 'don carlos' until june, 1784. in a letter of that date he assures dalberg,--mindful of that good man's trials in connection with 'cabal and love',--that the new play will be 'anything but a political piece'. whatever could offend the feelings was to be strictly avoided. august 24 he writes that 'don carlos' is a 'splendid, subject', especially for himself. four great characters, carlos, philip, the queen, and alva (no mention of posa) open before him a boundless field. he cannot forgive himself for having tried to shine in the bourgeois drama, where another may easily surpass him (this in allusion to iffland), whereas in historical tragedy he need fear no rival. he adds that he is now fairly master of the iambic form and that the verse cannot fail to impart splendor and dignity. so we see that by the end of his first year in mannheim schiller had indeed undergone a change. the _saeva indignatio_ of the dramatic pamphleteer had given way to the serener mood of the poetic artist. this change would doubtless have come about under any circumstances, through the natural ripening of his mind and art, but it was hastened by the influence of klein and wieland, and by the example of lessing's 'nathan'. anton von klein, a jesuit _bel esprit_ living at mannheim, was a steadfast champion of the regular heroic tragedy. he had written a searching review of 'the robbers', pointing out its many faults and absurdities, but he recognized schiller's talent and saw in him a man worth converting. at mannheim a friendship sprang up between the two, and schiller heard much talk about the superior merit of the noble poetic style,--a region of thought in which he had hitherto wandered but little. he had written thus far out of the fervor of his soul, and theory of any sort had touched him but little. from rousseauite literature he had caught a fantastic conception of 'nature', and this had led him to portray men and women who were scarcely more natural than those of gottsched himself. in the rush of feeling he had enlisted among the young revolutionists whose stormy and stressful tendency, curiously enough, was regarded as 'english'. and now he found that there was after all something to be said in favor of the classical french type. the 'anglo-maniacs' were not in possession of the whole truth. might there not be, perhaps, a _tertium quid_,--a german drama having a character of its own and combining the literary dignity and artistic finish of the french with the warmth and variety of the pseudo-english school? as if in answer to this query, lessing's 'nathan', published in 1779, had already opened a vista of limitless possibilities. and 'nathan' was in blank verse. to this was added the influence of wieland, who had lately published a series of 'letters to a young poet',[66] in which he read his contemporaries a lecture on the absurdity of their boasting over the french. he wanted to know where the german dramas were that could compare with the best works of racine, corneille and molière. he insisted that a perfect drama no less than a perfect epic must be in verse. even rime in his opinion was indispensable. such doctrine coming from a man of wieland's immense authority in literary matters could not fail to influence the groping mind of schiller, though he could not stomach the demand for rime. the blank verse of shakspere and lessing seemed to promise best, and so he set about practicing upon it. at first the meter gave him great difficulty; he could not subdue his strong passion and his wild tropes to the even tenor of the decasyllabic cadence. then followed his decision to publish his play piecemeal in the _thalia_,--an unfortunate decision as it proved. his hope was to profit betimes by what his critics might say. he was in a mood of boundless docility and boundless confidence in the public. resolved to write 'no verses that could not be submitted to the best heads in the nation', he fondly imagined that the nation would be as eager to help him as he was eager to be helped. as a matter of fact he got but little assistance from the critic tribe, and his piecemeal publication only served to embarrass him when he came to the final redaction of the whole. in the short preface which introduced the first installment to the public, schiller ventured the opinion that the excellence of his tragedy would depend mainly upon his success in portraying the king. the situation of carlos and the queen was interesting, he thought, but not tragically pathetic; it would be difficult to create sympathy for them. if, however, king philip was to be the center of tragic interest, it was evident that he could not be depicted, in accordance with a one-sided tradition, as a repellent monster. from these and other expressions in the same essay we can see that schiller was growing cool toward his hero. he felt that the troubles of carlos and the queen could not be regarded under the rousseauite scheme of natural passion battling with odious convention, but that the passion was itself odious. he felt that a young prince, pining and whining and plunging himself into disaster all on account of an illicit and mawkish love for his stepmother, was not a very inspiring personage to be the hero of a great historical drama. the solution of the problem seemed for the moment to lie in a 'rescue' of king philip. so the love-tragedy in a royal household began to take on more than ever the character of a political tragedy, the promise to dalberg being quickly forgotten. when he began to publish, however, his political program was still rather vague and negative; it hardly went beyond the intention to bestow an incidental scourging upon the enemies of mankind in church and state. then came the influence of körner, the effect of which was to give great prominence to the character of posa as a positive champion of the right, and to make him for a while the real hero of the play. there seems at first blush but little resemblance between the fanatical idealist of schiller's imagination and the sensible dresden lawyer, but the körner strain in posa is unmistakable. in his intercourse with schiller he was evermore insisting on the importance of doing something for mankind. enthusiasm, love, friendship, sentiment of any kind, were valuable in his estimation only as sources of inspiration for telling activity. as matters of mere private ecstasy, of froth and foam rising and falling to no effect in the turmoil of the individual soul, they were for him objects of mild derision. and the idea that lay nearest his heart as a student of kant was the idea of freedom. and so, as schiller worked upon his play at dresden, posa was made the exponent of the new point of view. he became the teacher of the unripe carlos, even as körner had been the teacher of the unripe schiller; the subduer of unmanly emotionalism; the apostle of renunciation; the pointer of the way to great deeds; the prophet of a free humanity to come. in the brilliant light thus thrown upon posa the other heroes were somewhat obscured. the poet's original love, don carlos, and his second love, don philip, had to make way for a third passion that was stronger than either of the others. the four installments of 'don carlos' that were printed in the _thalia_, up to the end of 1786, comprised in all three acts. they carried the action to the point where the king, lonely amid sycophants and deceivers, sighs for a 'man' to counsel him. the great scene between posa and philip was yet to come in act iv. the matter already in print contained more than four thousand verses, and several scenes had only been sketched in prose. at this rate it was evident that the play would reach twice the length of a regular tragedy and would be an impossibility on the stage. schiller began to see that his impatience of stage restrictions and his subjective interest in certain situations had done him an evil turn. he had been deplorably long-winded. and just then came out a caustic review which showed him that he had committed other sins than those of prolixity.[67] nevertheless he did not now have recourse to that drastic surgery whereby, in the edition of 1801, he reduced the unwieldy play to more manageable dimensions.[68] without any radical revision of the part already in print, he completed the last two acts as best he could, with minerva often unwilling. posa was made to gain the king's confidence, to become seemingly omnipotent, and in the pride of his imagined strength to enter upon that desperate game of intrigue and double-dealing which involves himself and his cause and his helpless friend, don carlos, in final disaster. thus st. réal's pathetic tale of love and intrigue had been left far behind, and out of it had come a tragedy of amiable political idealism, growing insolent with self-confidence and losing touch with present realities in its dazzling dream of things to come. 'the soul of shakspere's hamlet, the blood and nerves of leisewitz's julius, the pulse of schiller himself',--this, it will be recalled, was the original formula for the composition of prince carlos. but, alas, the soul of one of shakspere's heroes is not so easily purloined, and schiller did not succeed well in his proposed larceny. what we find is not the soul but the situation of hamlet: a young prince just returned from the university,--troubled by a strange melancholy,--a mystery to king and court,--beset by spies whom he sends packing,--visited by a dear academic friend,--called to a great work to which he feels himself unequal, and so forth. the parallel is obvious, but it hardly goes beyond externalities. nor does the portrait of carlos owe very much that is vital to leisewitz. he gives us, to be sure, a love-sick prince whose illicit passion unnerves him, and like carlos julius has a friend who admonishes him to be a man. but there the resemblance ends; he has not the strength to renounce and remains to the end a sentimental weakling. the truth is that the soul, pulse, blood and nerves of carlos are simply schiller's own. there is no other creation of his into which he put so much of himself. that feeling of dark despair and dead ambition to which carlos gives expression in his first dialogue with posa is but a poetic echo of actual experiences. i too have known a carlos in my dreams whose cheek flushed crimson when he heard the name of freedom. but that carl is dead and buried,-sighs the spanish prince. 'i might perhaps have become great, but fate took the field against me too early.... love and esteem me for that which i might have become under more favorable stars',--writes the actual schiller.[69] and just as carlos throws himself into the arms of posa and thinks to find his all in friendship, so schiller hoped ineffable things from körner. nowhere else in literature has the eighteenth-century cult of friendship found such fervid, and in the main such noble, expression as in 'don carlos'. it may indeed be fairly objected that, in view of what is to come later, the carlos of the first act is a little too soft even for the sentimental age. we are required to have faith in his heroic capacity for enterprises of great pith and moment. but after his first dialogue with posa it is as difficult for the reader or spectator to trust him as it is for king philip. his lacrimose raptures over so simple a thing as a youthful friendship; his abject confession of despair and dependence; his long-drawn-out revelation of a sick heart, and his morbid craving for sympathy in a passion which he himself feels to be abominable,--all this suggests a cankered soul of which there can be little hope. hamlet greets the returning horatio with the simple words: sir, my good friend. i'll change that name with you. the corresponding passage in schiller runs: can it be? is't true? is't possible? 'tis really thou. i press thee to my heart and feel the beat of thine omnipotent against my own. now all is well again.--in this embrace the sickness of my soul is cured. i lie upon my roderick's neck. one does not see how such pitiful weakness is all at once to be converted into manly strength by the mere arrival of a friend; wherefore that fine saying of carlos which closes the first act, arm in arm with thee, i hurl defiance at my century, sounds a trifle bombastic. so again at his first meeting with elizabeth, carlos is distressingly mawkish. she pictures him, in pitying indignation, as succeeding to the throne, undoing his father's work and at last marrying herself. then he exclaims in sudden horror: accursed son! yes, it is over. now 'tis over. now i see it all so clearly, and much more of the same purport. but how strange that he should have brooded for eight moons over his passion without ever having considered how it might appear to the object of it! his talk here suggests a mental inadequacy which one is hardly prepared to see change all of a sudden into heroic resolution. to be sure it was a part of schiller's design to represent in carlos a process of evolution. under the influence of manly friendship the puling sentimentalist was to have his fiber toughened into the stuff that great men are made of; and so it was quite in order that he should appear at first as a weakling. but he is too much of a weakling, and the reason is that schiller did not foresee the end from the beginning. he thought of carlos originally as a hapless youth having a sort of natural right to rebel. it was a part of the plan, moreover, that he should renounce and grow strong through renunciation. but this was to come later in the third act; in the beginning he was to dally with the morbid passion which was to be his tragic guilt. now with this conception of the subject, the portrait of carlos, just as we have it, fits in very well; but when the main interest of the play had become political, when the lawless love had become of no account and the renunciation everything,--then it was surely an error to introduce carlos in such a pitiful plight of soul that faith in him is next to impossible, and the next moment require us to accept him as a hero. in fine, one may well wish that carlos had a little more of the soul of hamlet,--leastwise of hamlet's rough energy of character and saving sense of humor. but the time is past for thinking to dispose of schiller by saying that he was no shakspere. enough that he was himself. and nowhere was he more himself than in just this combination of infinite soft-heartedness with large manly ambition. when carlos preaches to his father that 'tears are the eternal credential of humanity', he utters a genuine oracle of the sentimental age. and when in the final scene he appears purified by suffering, master of his selfish passion and all intent upon that higher good of which he has caught a glimpse, he speaks again from the heart of schiller. what a noble figure is carlos in this last interview with his mother! what matchless poetry in the lines! and how genuinely, thrillingly tragic is the ending of the scene! the teacher of prince carlos is the amazing marquis of posa. in a cynical foot-note of the year 1845 carlyle quotes, with seeming approval, richter's comparison of posa to the tower of a light-house,--"high, far-shining, empty". but what would jean paul have had? is it not quite enough for a light-house to be high and far-shining? one does not see how its usefulness would be enhanced by filling it with the beans and bacon of practical politics. here surely one must side with schiller and never think of criticising him for not making his posa an exponent of political ideas that belong to a later time. every age has its dream. ours is of a people to be made happy by democratic legislation; schiller's was of a people to be made happy by the personal goodness and enlightenment of the monarch. that the one dream, seen _sub specie aeternitatis_, is any more empty and fatuous than the other, would be very difficult to prove. the sentimental imagination of the eighteenth century was fond of dwelling upon the loneliness of the princely station. standing above all other men, occupied habitually with weighty matters of state, surrounded by self-seeking flatterers and schemers, how was a ruler ever to hear the truth or to know the blessedness of disinterested friendship? awful fate to be thus cut off from tender human affection and compelled to tread the wine-press alone! and if a prince should really find a friend, how fortunate for him and his subjects! it was the simple theory of idealists under the old régime that the happiness of a people depended altogether upon the wisdom and goodness of the king; and in an age when 'feeling was everything' it was natural that goodness of the heart should count for more than mere sagacity. what the king was believed to need pre-eminently, was to keep alive his human sympathies; and how could he do this better than by having some one to love and confide in? so schiller provides his spanish prince with a friend. our drama seems to wish to impute to posa a lovable personality; else how account for the spell that he casts over all three of the royal personages?[70] looked at closely, however, and judged by his conduct rather than by his fine phrases, he appears anything but lovable. after his death it comes to light that he is deeply involved in a conspiracy for which the ordinary name is treason. he has been organizing a combination of european powers for the purpose of detaching the netherlands by force from the spanish crown. he returns to spain as an arch-traitor,--with his pockets full of letters which if discovered would cost him his head. when one learns this and then thinks back in the light of this knowledge, his conduct throughout the play appears absolutely inconceivable; so that one is driven to the conjecture that schiller did not think of him all along as an out-and-out traitor, but added this touch at the last, along with others, for the purpose of accenting his character as a quixotic madman. up to the fourth act the impression produced by him is that of an amiable idealist, who has travelled extensively and acquired liberal ideas of government. he has been shocked by the regime of persecution and bloodshed in the netherlands. he cares nothing for protestantism as a creed, but he is an apostle of tolerance in the style of frederick the great. he returns to spain intent upon securing for the netherlands not political independence through revolution, but freedom of thought under the spanish crown; and this he thinks to accomplish by procuring the stadholdership for prince carlos. now this being the presupposition, it was a great thought of schiller to bring his humane dreamer face to face with the somber despot, philip the second, let it be granted that posa's views of statesmanship, which belong to the age of enlightenment, could hardly have found lodgment in the brain of a chevalier of the 16th century. the thing is perhaps supposable only in poetry; but there it is supposable enough, and schiller need not have troubled himself to argue away the anachronism. it is the poet's prerogative to mask himself and his own age in the forms of the fictitious past. he will do it anyway, no matter how hard he may strive after historical verisimilitude. it is just as well, therefore, for him to throw away his scruples and stand boldly on his rights. from a dramaturgic point of view, indeed, the long political altercation between posa and philip is out of place; it is magnificent, but it holds up the action to no purpose, and the play goes on as if it had not been. schiller was evidently concerned to produce a pendant to the great scene in 'nathan the wise'. saladin wants truth, philip wants a man. both the prophets prepare themselves for their ordeal in a brief soliloquy. both monarchs get their wish, and a friendly relation ensues. both scenes are purple patches of didacticism,--the author preaching a sermon to his contemporaries. unfortunately schiller did not have at hand a matchless fable to make his doctrine concrete and give it human interest. in places his language is abstract and difficult to follow, but taken as a whole the scene is admirable in its denotation of posa's manly independence and humane philosophy. for a moment the marquis dreams of accomplishing his purpose by an appeal to the goodness and enlightenment of the king; and into his appeal he pours all the eloquence of eighteenth-century humanitarianism. all that the literature of generations had garnered up; all that lay on the heart of the young schiller, in the way of fair hopes for mankind to be realized by humane and enlightened rulership, finds here immortal expression through the mouth of posa. and then what a revulsion in the last two acts! the great scene of the third act leaves an impression that the world's affairs are not in such bad hands after all. posa does not convince the king's mind, but he finds his heart and wins his confidence. one has the feeling that, if he bide his time and use some tact, he can accomplish all that he desires. but to our amazement he gives up the king and enters upon a desperate game of double-dealing in which he deceives everybody. he forms the plan of sending carlos to the netherlands as the leader of a revolt. of this plan he says nothing to his friend, nor does he tell him of his own new relation to the king. instead he wraps himself in mystery and asks carlos for his letter-case. this he turns over to the king, and gets a warrant for the arrest of carlos. the young prince, suspecting quite reasonably that he has been betrayed, goes to eboli for enlightenment. here posa finds him and draws his dagger upon the woman, as if she were the possessor of some terrible secret,--which in fact she is not. then he relents and arrests carlos without explanation. he now writes a compromising letter which he knows will cause his own death. then, after some delay, he goes to carlos and tries to explain his strange conduct, and while he is telling his story the bullet of the king's assassin finds him. carlos mourns the great departed as a pattern of unexampled heroic virtue, but one can have little sympathy with the panegyric, especially after one learns that posa was a traitor from the beginning. there would be little profit in discussing the last two acts of 'don carlos' with respect to their inherent reasonableness. it is possible to frame an intelligible theory of posa's conduct, but not one which is perfectly coherent, and least of all one which shall harmonize with the impression produced by the first three acts. there we have an amiable idealist, whom we can at least understand; here a madman smitten, like fiesco, with a mania for managing a large and dangerous intrigue all in his own way, and accomplishing his ends by modes of action which seem to him heroic, but to the ordinary mind utterly preposterous. thus he accounts for his failure to confide his plans to carlos by saying that he was 'beguiled by false delicacy',--which seems to mean that his relation to the king was felt by him as a breach of friendship. but how strange that a man with public ends in view should feel thus under the circumstances! so too his self-sacrifice is nothing but heroic folly, since his death in no way betters the chances of carlos for escape. the flight would have had a better chance of success had posa omitted his heroics altogether and quietly planned to escape with his friend. in fine, we have to do here with entirely abnormal psychic processes. the reader and still more the spectator is bewildered by posa, and does not know any better than carlos and the king know how to take him.[71] turning now to the portrait of the king we find there too the traces of a wavering purpose. the original conception was dark as erebus. in the first act, more especially in the first act as originally printed, the king of spain is painfully suggestive of a wicked ogre swooping in upon a nursery of naughty children. such an insanely jealous, swaggering, domineering, cruel fanatic is too loathsome to be interesting. then came the thought, suggested partly by the reading of brantôme and ferrera, of presenting philip's character in a more favorable light and making him the center of tragic interest,--a thought which was neither given up nor consistently carried out. in october, 1785, schiller wrote to körner that he was reading watson and that 'weighty reforms were threatening his own philip and alva.' the rev. robert watson's history by no means idealizes philip, but it credits him with sincerity, vigilance, penetration, self-control, administrative capacity and a 'considerable share of sagacity' in the choice of ministers and generals,--not an altogether mean list of kingly qualities. on the other hand, in mercier's book[72] philip appears as the embodiment of all those qualities which the age of enlightenment regarded as odious in a ruler. thus, just as in the case of fiesco, schiller found himself pulled this way and that by his authorities; and the result of his attempt to graft an impressive monarch upon the stock furnished by st. réal's jealous husband is a philip who does not fully satisfy either the historic sense or the poetic imagination. for schiller, of course, a truly great monarch needed to have a tender heart; so philip was given certain sentimental traits. he feels the loneliness of his station. in spite of his seeming coldness the pleading of carlos for affection touches him, and he gives orders that henceforth his son is to stand nearer to the throne. for the purpose of exhibiting the king's magnanimity we have the anachronistic scene in which he is made to pardon medina sidonia for the loss of the great armada,--an event which happened twenty years later. then he becomes suspicious of domingo and alva and longs for an honest man to tell him the truth. and when the man appears the king is most surprisingly open-minded. 'this fire', he says to posa, is admirable. you would fain do good, just _how_ you do it, patriot and sage can little care. so philip is a patriot and a sage, glowing with the holy fire of humanity; and as such he even deigns to explain his policy and to enter into a contest of magnanimity with posa. but the large-hearted monarch of whom we get a glimpse in this scene is soon reduced back to the jealous husband of st. réal, and his jealousy is closely patterned upon that of othello. the philip of the last two acts is sometimes pitiable, sometimes repulsive, never great. one is not very much surprised when he hires an assassin to kill posa, instead of handing him over to the law. of the remaining characters the queen is the most interesting. in her schiller for the first time depicts a woman convincingly. his elizabeth is perhaps a shade too angelic,--she is an ideal figure like all his women,--but winsome she certainly is. one is a little startled by the readiness with which she approves posa's treasonable plan of a revolution to be headed by don carlos, but in this play the sentiment of patriotism cuts no figure anywhere. the principal characters are all occupied with the idea of 'humanity', and are not troubled by any scruples arising out of national feeling. taken as a whole 'don carlos' is too complicated to yield an unalloyed artistic pleasure. it suffers from a lack of simplicity and concentration. there is material in it for two or three plays. the double intrigue of love and politics becomes toward the end very confusing. the confusion is increased by the unexpected turn given to the character of posa, and reaches a climax when we learn from the grand inquisitor that _he_ has been pulling all the strings from first to last, and that the entire tragedy was foreordained in the secret archives of the holy office. the unity of interest is marred by the fact that in the last two acts the real hero, don carlos, drops into the background as the helpless tool of the incalculable marquis. and carlos, too, sometimes acts rather unaccountably; for example, when he supposes that the wanton _billet-doux_ signed 'e.' can come from the queen, of whose purity and high-mindedness he has just had convincing evidence. then again his conduct toward the princess eboli in the love scene is very singular,--one might say amazing. and there are some other such defects, which concern the stage more than the reader and which, by skillful acting and judicious excision, can be reduced to insignificant proportions. when well played 'don carlos' produces a powerful impression. for the reader it is a noble poem containing a large ingredient of schiller's best self. footnotes: [footnote 65: it is printed in sämtliche schriften, iii, 180.] [footnote 66: in the _teutsche merkur_ for october, 1782.] [footnote 67: in the _neue bibliothek der schönen wissenschaften_, vol. xxxii; reprinted by braun, "schiller und goethe im urteile ihrer zeitgenossen", i, 152 ff.] [footnote 68: the fragments published in the _thalia_ contained 4140 lines; the _editio princeps_ of 1787, 6283; the edition of 1801, this being the form in which the play is usually read, 5370.] [footnote 69: letter to reinwald april 14, 1783.] [footnote 70: kuno fischer, "schiller-schriften," i, 217, observes: "freilich bedarf die schauspielkunst um diese scene [the great scene between posa and philip] so magisch wirken zu lassen, wie das genie des dichters sie erzeugt und gestaltet hat, eines posa, dem die natur die seltensten gaben verliehen. jede seiner bewegungen, jede geberde, jeder ton, ist anmut und wohlklang. er überzeugt den könig nicht durch den inhalt seiner rede, er rührt ihn nicht durch seine ideen, und doch gewinnt er ihn völlig, weil er ihn persönlich bezaubert." the natural effect of schiller's words, however, is to give an impression that the king is moved not solely by posa's personal charm, but in part by the idealism of his character.] [footnote 71: perhaps the best possible account of his death is that of kuno fischer, "schiller-schriften", i, 215: "er opfert sich für ein weltgeschichtliches ideal, das er idyllisch träumte."] [footnote 72: see above, page 169.] chapter x anchored in thuringia ich musz ein geschöpf um mich haben, das mir gehört. _letter of 1788_. the weimar of schiller's first acquaintance--arrived there july 21, 1787--consisted of a petty provincial court plus an unsightly village. the inhabitants numbered about six thousand. of the space built over about one-third was occupied by the buildings of the court, much of the outlying modern weimar being then under water. the streets were narrow, muddy lanes, the houses plain and poor. and yet the sluggish little place, so unprepossessing in all material ways, was already beginning to assert that claim to glory which has since been conceded to it by all the world. princely patronage of art and letters was by no means unknown elsewhere in germany, but it was usually a matter of gracious condescension on the one side and grateful adulation on the other. very different in weimar, where goethe was not only a member of the council, but the duke's most intimate friend and trusted adviser. in his heart karl august cared less for aesthetic matters than is often supposed, but his mother, the dowager duchess amalie, patronized art for the real love of it. poetry and music were as the breath of life to her, and her taste in poetry had been trained by the greatest living master. aside from goethe, two other distinguished writers had found a home in weimar. the kindly but changeable wieland, not really one of the _dii majores_, but so regarded at the time, had lived there since 1772; herder, much more nobly endowed, but less amiable and less popular, since 1776. at the time of schiller's advent goethe was still in italy, whither he had gone the previous autumn to find relief from the miseries of duodecimo statesmanship. karl august and the reigning duchess luise were also absent, but several minor notables of the court circle had remained 'in town', and the dowager duchess was giving aesthetic teas as usual in her easily accessible 'castle' at tiefurt. wieland and herder were likewise at home. on his arrival schiller was taken charge of by the baroness von kalb, who was awaiting her soul's affinity with feverish eagerness. her excitement at seeing him again amounted to a 'paroxysm' which made her ill for a week. then she grew better and her emotions gradually found the level of a friendliness too passionate to be called platonic, but not sinful in the lower sense. as for schiller, he devotedly let himself be loved and introduced to weimar society, the pair making no concealment of their liking for each other. at first he felt some compunctions on account of the absent husband, who might be annoyed by gossip. it pleased him to observe, therefore, that in weimar such a friendship was taken as a matter of course and treated with delicacy.[73] 'charlotte' he wrote to körner, 'is a grand, exceptional, womanly soul, a real study for me and worthy to occupy a greater mind than mine. with each forward step in our intercourse i discover in her new manifestations that surprise and delight me like beautiful spots in a broad landscape.' for several months he played this unwholesome role of cicisbeo to charlotte von kalb. then another and very different charlotte crossed his path and quickly taught him the better way. the story of schiller's gradual adjustment to the weimar _milieu_ is told very fully in his frequent letters to körner. he called upon herder and wieland, and was received with 'amazing politeness' by the one, with loquacious cordiality by the other. herder knew nothing of his writings and regaled him with idolatrous talk about goethe. wieland knew all about him except that he had not yet seen 'don carlos'; criticised his early plays frankly as lacking in correctness and artistic finish, but expressed the utmost confidence in him nevertheless. he was received at tiefurt, but did not like the dowager duchess: her mind, he reported, was very narrow; nothing interested her but the sensuous. a few days later he heard that 'don carlos' had been read to a select assembly at tiefurt and had not made a good impression; there had been caustic criticism of the piece, particularly the last two acts, and wieland, who was present, had not stood up for it. this led to a coolness toward wieland. by the end of three weeks schiller had despaired of weimar and was miserable. he thought of leaving the place in disgust. in august he spent a week at jena as the guest of professor reinhold, who was about to begin lecturing upon kant and was predicting that after a century the königsberg philosopher would have a reputation like that of jesus christ. reinhold's enthusiasm led schiller to read some of kant's shorter essays, among which a paper upon universal history gave him 'extraordinary satisfaction'. from reinhold came also the assurance that it would be easy to secure a jena professorship. the idea did not at once take hold of him in the sense of becoming a definite purpose, but it tallied with his inclination. his experience with 'don carlos' had left him in doubt whether the drama was after all his true vocation, and he had already begun to work fitfully upon a history of the dutch rebellion. so he decided to remain a little longer in weimar and devote himself to historical writing; and, this resolution formed, life at once began to open more pleasantly before him. he saw that he had made the mistake of taking the weimar magnates too seriously; of imagining that they were all sitting in judgment upon him, and that it was of the greatest importance to win their favor. 'i begin to find life here quite tolerable,' he wrote early in september, 'and the secret of it--you will wonder that it did not occur to me before--is not to bother my head about anybody.' and indeed he had no reason to be disgruntled. herder was pleased with 'don carlos' and came out in its favor before the aesthetic tribunal of tiefurt. wieland noticed it favorably in the _merkur_, spoke flatteringly of it in conversation and declared himself now convinced that schiller's forte was the drama. henceforth the two men were fast friends and presently schiller was toying with the thought of marrying wieland's favorite daughter. 'i do not know the girl at all', he wrote, 'but i would ask for her to-day if i thought i deserved her.'[74] his scruple was that he was too much of a cosmopolitan to be permanently contented with 'these people'. a simple-minded, innocent girl of domestic proclivities would not be happy with him. the autumn passed in quiet work devoted mainly to his 'defection of the netherlands'. the duke of weimar came home for a few days towards the ist of october, but immediately went away again to holland. schiller did not even see him. evidently there was nothing to be hoped for immediately in that quarter; he would have to rely upon himself. but he was now in demand. the _merkur_ was eager for contributions from his pen, and so was the _litteratur-zeitung_, whose extensive review factory had been shown him during his sojourn in jena. then there was the comatose _thalia_, which he determined to revive after new year's. in november he spent a few days at meiningen, where his sister christophine was now living as the wife of reinwald. he saw frau von wolzogen and lotte (who was about to be married), but bauerbach had lost its charm. 'the old magic,' he wrote to korner, 'had been blown away. i felt nothing. none of all the places that formerly made my solitude interesting had anything to say to me.' on his return fate was lurking for him at rudolstadt, where his friend, wilhelm von wolzogen, introduced him to frau von lengefeld and her two daughters, 'both creatures ', schiller wrote, 'are attractive, without being beautiful and please me much. you find here considerable acquaintance with recent literature, also refinement, feeling and intelligence. they play the piano well, which gave me a delightful evening.' the elder daughter, karoline, was married unhappily to a herr von beulwitz, from whom she afterwards separated to marry wilhelm von wolzogen. she was a woman of much literary talent, which found employment later in a novel, 'agnes von lilien', and in her excellent memoir of schiller. the other daughter was unmarried and bore the auspicious name of charlotte. lotte von lengefeld, whose memory is cherished with idealizing tenderness by the germans, was now twenty-one years old,--a demure maiden whose eyes spake more than her tongue. she had long since won the heart of the baroness von stein, who had introduced her at the weimar court and held out to her the hope of becoming a lady-in-waiting to the duchess luise. goethe was fond of her and did not omit to send her affectionate greetings from distant italy. some time before, she had spent a year with her mother and sister in switzerland for the purpose of improving her french; and on the way home, in the summer of 1784, the party had caught a glimpse of schiller in mannheim. now the sisters were living in a sort of idyllic solitude at rudolstadt, cut off from the great world, absorbed in their books, their music, and the memories of that happy year in switzerland. karoline von wolzogen writes, in speaking of this occasion: my sister was seemingly in every respect a desirable match for schiller. she had a very winsome form and face. an expression of purest goodness of heart enlivened her features, and her eyes flashed only truth and innocence. thoughtful and susceptible to the good and the beautiful in life and in art, her whole nature was a beautiful harmony. of even temper, but faithful and tenacious in her affections, she seemed created to enjoy the purest happiness. making all needful allowance for the partiality of a sister, one cannot wonder that the visitor went on his way with the feeling that rudolstadt might be a good place in which to spend the summer. the condition of his mind was certainly such as to facilitate the designs of providence. in january, 1788, he wrote to korner as follows: i am leading a miserable life, miserable through the condition of my inner being. i must have a creature about me who belongs to me; whom i can and must make happy; in whose existence my own can grow fresh again. you do not know how desolate my soul is, how dark my mind; and all not because of my external fortune,--for i am really very well off so far as that is concerned,--but because of the inward wearing out of my feelings.... i need a medium through which i can enjoy the other blessings. friendship, taste, truth and beauty will produce a greater effect upon me when a continual succession of sweet, beneficent, domestic feelings attune me to joy and warm up my torpid being. in mid-winter lotte von lengefeld came to weimar for the social season and schiller saw her occasionally with steadily increasing interest. their famous correspondence, beginning in february, 1788, is at first very reserved, very formal and decorous, but soon begins to bewray the beating of the heart. 'you will go, dearest fräulein', writes schiller on the 5th of april, as lotte was about to return to rudolstadt, 'and i feel that you take away with you the best part of my present joys.' a month later she had found him lodgings in the neighboring village of volkstedt, and then came a delightful summer idyl, which prolonged itself until the middle of november,--an idyl not of love-making, for schiller could not yet pluck up the courage for that, but of spiritual comradeship. to quote karoline again: a new life began for schiller in our house. he had long been denied the delight of a free, friendly intercourse, and he always found us susceptible to the thoughts that filled his soul. he wished to influence us, to teach us what might serve our turn of poetry, art, and philosophy, and this effort gave to himself a gentle harmonious disposition.... when we saw him coming to our house in the shimmer of the sunset, a bright ideal life disclosed itself to our inner sense. lofty seriousness and the light gracious winsomeness of a pure and open soul were always present in schiller's conversation; in listening to him one walked as among the changeless stars of heaven and the flowers of the earth.... schiller became calmer, clearer; his appearance and his character more winsome, his mind more averse to those fantastic views of life which he had hitherto not been able to banish. a new hope and joy dawned in the heart of my sister, and i returned, in the happiness of a new inspiring friendship, to a true enjoyment of life. our whole social circle shared in the pleasure of this kindly magic. the discourse of these amiable truth-seekers turned partly at least upon the greeks. up to this time schiller had remained virtually ignorant of the greek poets, thus missing the best of all sanative influences. he had absorbed indirectly something of the hellenism that had been diffused through the air by winckelmann, lessing, herder and goethe, but his knowledge of the greek language was very rudimentary, and good translations had not been easily procurable. thus the glory that was greece now came to him with the charm of a new discovery. the poem, 'the gods of greece,' contributed to the _merkur_ in march, 1788, marks the beginning of his hellenizing. a little later homer fascinated him. a letter written in august runs thus: i now read almost nothing but homer. i have got voss' translation of the odyssey, which is in truth excellent, aside from the hexameters, which i cannot endure.... for the next two years i have made up my mind to read no more modern authors.... not one of them benefits me. they all lead me away from myself, and the ancients now give me true enjoyment. at the same time i need them most urgently to purify my own taste, which through subtlety, artificiality and smartness was beginning to depart from true simplicity. you will find that familiar intercourse with the ancients will benefit me exceedingly, perhaps give me classicity. i shall first study them in good translations and then, when i almost know them by heart, read the greek originals. in this way i expect to play at the study of the greek language. on the 7th of september, 1788, an event occurred: goethe, who had now returned from italy, came to visit the lengefelds, and schiller was introduced to him. for a year he had heard goethe idolized on every hand and felt his spirit brooding over the weimar atmosphere. what he heard did not please him. the local goethe-cult, so he wrote to körner, was characterized by a proud, philosophic contempt of all speculation and investigation. this 'child-like simplicity of mind', this 'resigned surrender to the five senses', seemed to him a sort of affectation. besides this he was irritated by goethe's prosperity and lordly independence. at the same time he could not help admiring him as a poet. the new 'iphigenie' gave him a 'happy day', though his pleasure was somewhat marred by the depressing thought that he himself would never be able to produce anything like it. and so he waited with eager expectation to see what a personal acquaintance would bring forth. it brought forth pleasure mixed with dubiety. after that first interview with the great man he wrote to korner thus: on the whole, my idea of him, which was in truth very great, has not suffered from this personal acquaintance; but i doubt whether we shall ever come very close to each other. much that is still interesting to me has had its day with him. he is so far in advance of me,--not so much in years but in self-development and experience of life,--that we shall never come together. and then his whole being is differently organized from mine. his world is not mine; our ways of looking at things seem essentially different. nevertheless one cannot draw a sure conclusion from such a meeting. time will tell. upon goethe the meeting made no impression at all. for him schiller was the author of 'the robbers', a work whose popularity annoyed him. he did not know, and he took no pains to find out, that schiller was no longer in sympathy with the ideas that had found expression in the detested play. so he held himself aloof and six years passed ere the two men came together in a friendly intimacy. at the same time there was nothing like ill-will on goethe's part. he recognized schiller's talent, praised 'the gods of greece' and was half pleased with the review of 'egmont', which might well have nettled a less olympian temper. in the fall of 1788 'the defection of the netherlands' was published and favorably received. about the same time a vacancy occurred in the jena faculty, and schiller's friends proposed him for the position. goethe took the matter up with the various governments concerned and met with no opposition. and so it came about, one day in december, that schiller, who had meanwhile taken to translating euripides and was planning a whole greek theater in german, was interrupted by an official notice that he had been appointed professor of history at jena and would be expected to enter upon his duties in the spring. it was only an 'extraordinary' professorship without salary, but its possibilities as a stepping-stone were alluring. he decided to accept. now came a short season of helpless and comical dismay. 'i would take a thrashing', he wrote to körner, 'if i could have you here for four-and-twenty hours. goethe quotes his _docendo discitur_, but these gentlemen do not seem to know how small my learning is.' to lotte he declared that he should feel ridiculous in the new situation. 'many a student will perhaps know more history than the professor. nevertheless i think like sancho panza with respect to his governorship: to whom god gives an office, to him he gives understanding; and when i have my island i shall rule it like a nabob.' it was not pleasant to drop his fascinating studies of the greek poets and bury himself in learned sawdust, but the thing was not to be helped. so the winter and spring were devoted mainly to historical reading. at the same time, however, 'the ghostseer' was carried along in the now resuscitated _thalia_, and the long poem, 'the artists', was slowly and with infinite revision got ready for publication in the _merkur_. during this period he saw little or nothing of goethe and steadily nursed a splenetic determination not to like the man. passages in his letters are almost comical in their perversity of misjudgment. he was exasperated by goethe's reticence, composure and self-sufficiency,--qualities which seemed to him to spring out of calculating egotism. goethe, so the arraignment ran, was a man who went on his way serenely dispensing favors, winning love and admiration and putting people under obligation, but always like a god,--without ever giving his intimate self or surrendering his own freedom. for his part, he, schiller, did not wish to live near such a man, much as he admired his intellect and valued his judgment. this attitude of his was a great trial to the lengefeld sisters, who did not fail to expostulate with him. but it was of no use. 'i have not time', he declared, 'in this short and busy life, to attempt a decipherment of goethe's enigmatic character. if he is really such a very lovable being, i shall find it out in the next world, when we shall all be angels.' in fine he was not yet ripe for an understanding of the weimar sovereign. he did not see that goethe's method was after all a giving of himself, and that the self thus given was not the worse but the better for having outgrown the effusive raptures of sentimentalism. in may the lectures at jena began with great _éclat_. on the first day students to the number of five or six hundred flocked to hear the author of 'the robbers' expound the difference between the philosophic scholar and the bread-and-butter professor. it was an inspiring discourse, full of high idealism and well fitted to inspire the souls of ingenuous youth, even though they might not quite understand it. the students were enthusiastic and gave the new professor the unusual compliment of a serenade. having decided to begin with a course of free public lectures upon universal history, he took his duties very seriously, and even after curiosity had abated he continued, during the first term, to address a large audience. he had hoped only for prestige, and the game was quickly won. he was the most popular professor in jena. all this time, however, his heart was in rudolstadt,--with the two sisters to whom, for a year and a half, he had been writing letters of impartial platonic devotion. late in july he received a hint from karoline to the effect that her sister was very much in love with him and that an understanding might be desirable. then at last the timorous, cunctatory worshiper of femininity in the abstract declared himself and prayed to know if the good news could be true. lotte assured him that it was; if she could make him happy she was willing to devote herself to the enterprise during the remainder of her days. now the millennium began. our celestial dreamer, who had thus been gently pushed over the threshold by a friendly hand, found himself in a human paradise much more grateful to the soul than the court of venus urania. he was very, very happy. the black phantoms that had beset his pathway hitherto,--the depressing sense of loneliness, of having missed the great prize, of being _de trop_ at the banquet of life, the occasional promptings of pessimism and misanthropy, the baleful pull of illicit passion, the selfish hugging of an illusory freedom,--all these took their flight to return no more. he had found what he needed--salvation from self through a woman's love. but he did not behave like other sons of adam. he continued to address his love-letters to both sisters impartially, as if the possession of lotte were after all to be only a subordinate incident in the preservation of a triangular spiritual friendship. sometimes it is 'my dearest, dearest karoline', again 'my dearest, dearest lotte', most frequently 'my dearest dears'. at first the trio agreed to keep their momentous secret from _chère mère_. schiller was poor and his prospects all uncertain. when he began, in the fall of 1789, to give lectures that were to be paid for, he found that his income from students' fees would be insignificant. lotte had but a slender portion, and then there was that dreadful _von_ in her name. to meet this difficulty schiller procured the title of 'hofrat' from the duke of meiningen. then he laid the case before karl august of weimar, who was very sympathetic but also very poor. the best he could do was to promise shamefacedly a pittance of two hundred thalers by way of professorial salary. this, with love, was enough. in one of the noblest letters he ever wrote schiller now addressed himself to _chère mère_ who made no objections; and on the 22nd of february, 1790, the impecunious hofrat professor schiller and his courageous, aristocratic sweetheart were married. the work of schiller in the historical field will be considered by itself in the next chapter. before passing on to that subject, however, let us glance at the more important of the minor writings produced during the period just traversed. in 'the gods of greece' he strikes with almost clangorous emphasis the note of pagan aestheticism. the poem sees the world under the aspect of the beautiful and regards that as its most important aspect. the greek religion, we hear, peopled earth and sky and sea with lovely forms that gave warmth and color to life and fed the imagination with sensuous poetry. nature appeared living, spiritual. rock and stream and tree had each its tale to tell, its tale of passionate personal history. the gods were near, intelligible, sympathetic; and divine gifts were more precious for being shared by the giver. and as the gods were more human, so man was more divine. in comparison our modern monotheism is cold, abstract, mechanical. instead of a radiant apollo, we have the law of gravitation. we have lost the many fair gods of old to enrich one who is remote, unfathomable, self-sufficient. where art thou, beauteous world of story? fair morning of a vanished day! alas! the magic of thine ancient glory lives only in the poet's lay.[75] it was inevitable that such a frank eulogy of the old gods at the expense of the christian demiurgus should give offense. count leopold von stolberg put himself at the head of a vociferous opposition by denouncing the poem in a leipzig journal as blasphemous, and lamenting that the author of the noble 'song to joy' should have fallen so low. the modern reader finds it easy to acquit him on the religious arraignment, since he did not profess to present the claims of monotheism completely. we are quite willing to judge of poetry as poetry and to leave it its ancient privilege of passionate overstatement. of this privilege schiller availed himself in the fullest measure, going quite beyond the bounds of sanity in his idealization of the greeks, well might the indignant stolberg ask him if he really believed that the 'eternal bonds of the heart were gentler and holier when hymen tied them'. whatever else may be said of them, the amours of the greeks (gods and men) were not remarkably strong on the side of gentleness, holiness and fidelity. in respect of poetic merit schiller certainly had the right to his opinion that 'the gods of greece' surpassed his earlier efforts. to please wieland he aimed at horatian correctness, and he came near hitting the mark. there is no progress toward lightness of touch or melody of phrasing,--schiller was not the man for tuneful titillation of the ear,--but the poem is tolerably free from the bizarre hyperboles that mar its predecessors. it is intellectual, argumentative, but suffused at the same time with genuine feeling, and the stanzas have a stately impressive swing. goethe was pleased with the poem, but thought it too long,--a well-founded criticism, since many of the stanzas merely brought fresh illustrations of the same thought. in his revision schiller reduced the twenty-five stanzas of the original version to sixteen, and at the same time omitted or toned down the lines that had given offense. in its revised form it is in every way a better poem. in 'the artists' we have a sonorous panegyric of art as the great teacher and refiner of mankind. the poem shows the influence of herder's evolutionary speculations, being in reality nothing less than a condensed history of civilization. the old rousseauite point of view is here completely abandoned. no more girding at the degeneracy of the 'ink-spattering century'! the opening lines glorify the modern man as the 'ripest son of time, free through reason, strong through laws, great through gentleness'. then the sublime creature is admonished not to forget the goddess who made him what he is: in industry the bee may scorn thy merits, in cleverness a worm thy teacher be; thy knowledge thou must share with happier spirits, but art, o man, is all for thee.[76] after this we hear that man entered the land of knowledge through the morning gate of the beautiful; it was his inchoate art-sense that developed his understanding. the heavenly goddess urania, whom we know here as beauty and shall one day known as truth, accompanied him into the exile of mortality and became his loving nurse, teaching him to live by her law, free from wild passion and from the bondage of duty. to aid her in this work she chose a select body of priests, the artists, and taught them to imitate the fair forms of nature. in the contemplation of their work savage man was lifted to the heights of spiritual joy and forgot his gross appetites. he became acquainted with ideals and made gods and heroes for himself. then he began to weigh and compare these ideals and thus arose philosophy and science, which aim in their slow and halting way to explain the full import of the primeval revelation. all truth was given in symbols at the beginning, and the artists still remain the conservators and prophets of the highest spiritual things. in case of such a metrical disquisition it is not easy to separate the poetry, which in places is very good, from the intellectual content, which is not so good from a modern point of view. by the joint aid of several sciences laboriously piecing together bits of knowledge that have nothing to do with the goddess urania, we have learned something of primitive man, and what we have learned is very much out of tune with schiller's dream. he assigns to the aesthetic thrill a larger rôle than it has actually played in human history. this, however, is unimportant. what is more important is that by investing his subject with a nimbus of poetic mysticism he became one of the founders of the modern religion of art. for the theological revelation of truth he substitutes a secular revelation of beauty, which, however, was regarded by him as containing the germs of all truth and virtue. we see him moving toward a theory that truth, beauty and goodness are one, and that beauty is the one. to-day these abstractions, even when written with a capital initial, have no power to turn the heads of any but a few of the hyperaesthetical. for schiller's contemporaries, aweary of rationalistic narrowness and reaching out after new sources of inspiration, the religion of art had the great advantage of novelty. it laid hold of them powerfully, remaining, however, a dignified intellectual cult which was quite compatible with plain surroundings. it was a very different thing from the later decorative aestheticism. as poetry 'the artists' may be said to come under the head of metrical rhetoric. it quite lacks the simplicity and sensuousness of milton's canon, and as for passion, it is florid rather than passionate. it is however strong in schiller's strength,--in its vastness of outlook, its splendid sweep of thought, its magnificent phrase-making. at first indeed the reader is disturbed and perplexed by the argument. he is lifted up into the blue mists, far above the plane of the verifiable, and borne along hither and thither by successive gusts of the poetic afflatus. presently he is lost; there is no north and no south. by dint of review and cogitation he gets his bearings (if he is lucky), but only to lose them again as he is wafted on through the empyrean. not until he has read the poem many times, knows where he is going and is no longer pestered by the necessity of thinking, can he hope to enjoy the voyage. the beginning of 'the ghostseer,' published while schiller was still in dresden, was spoken of in chapter viii. his general idea, it would seem, was to describe an elaborate and fine-spun intrigue devised by mysterious agents of the romish church for the purpose of winning over a protestant german prince. but the details had not been very fully excogitated, and his foremost thought, after all, was simply to popularize the _thalia_, which was largely caviare to the general. the experiment proved moderately successful. curiosity was excited and inquiries began to be made. when, therefore, he was ready to resume the publication of the _thalia_, in the spring of 1788, he had reason to regard 'the ghostseer' as his most valuable asset. he set about continuing the story, feeling that it was 'miserable daubing' and a 'sinful waste of time'.[77] in this temper he wrote and published a second installment, which carried the story through what was subsequently known as the first book. in this installment the hoax of the ghost scene is cleared up, but the armenian remains a mystery. the prince maintains a sensible, rationalistic attitude, asks many questions, puts this and that together and finally concludes that armenian and sicilian are two charlatans working in collusion. up to this point 'the ghostseer' is a well-told and readable yarn, with only just philosophizing enough to give it a touch of dignity. in the second book it runs off into a quagmire of abstruse speculation, schiller had got the idea--and it interested him for personal reasons--of carrying his hero through a debauch of skepticism. this he thought would give weight and distinction to the book. so the prince's philosophic demoralization is described at tedious length and the story drops out of sight for a long time. then it is taken up again and the prince falls in love with a beautiful greek _réligieuse_. the portrayal of this woman aroused another flicker of interest on schiller's part, though she too was finally to be unmasked as one of the conspirators. then he seems to have tired of 'the ghostseer' altogether; at any rate he choked it off suddenly with a 'farewell', in which nothing is concluded save that the prince goes over to the catholic church. from this description it is evident that schiller's one attempt at novel-writing is of no great account as a contribution to artistic fiction. it is a torso consisting of two heterogeneous parts. it is not a study of life based upon the observation of life, but a tale of marvelous happenings which are recounted for the purpose of showing their subtle reaction upon the plastic mind of the prince. the hero is taken over a route that was to become very familiar,--the route from a narrow and gloomy type of protestantism through liberalism, rationalism, skepticism, pyrrhonism, and mental exhaustion to the repose of the catholic church. of course the story was not to end there, but what the further developments were to have been one can only guess. schiller himself did not think it worth while to enlighten the public, even after his 'ghostseer' began to call out imitations and continuations. in the 'letters upon don carlos', published in 1788, in wieland's _merkur_, schiller undertook to defend himself against his critics and to correct some misapprehensions. in temper and style they are admirable, even when they do not convince. they begin by admitting and accounting for that seeming incongruity between the first three and the last two acts, which has always been the gravamen of critical objection to 'don carlos'. after this they attempt to show that such a character as posa might very well have existed in the sixteenth century at the spanish court. then we are told that it was not the author's purpose to depict carlos and posa as a pair of ideal friends. for carlos, indeed, friendship is everything, but not for posa. in him the passion for friendship is everywhere subordinated to the passion for humanity. he is not to be blamed, therefore, for belying the character of a true friend, since that is not his dominant and essential character. he regards carlos merely as an indispensable tool for his political designs. in his interview with the king he is carried away by a momentary enthusiasm,--what he says there is of no importance, his hopes being really fixed upon don carlos. at the beginning of the fourth act he sees not his personal friend, but the instrument of his political plans, in awful danger. he resolves to save him for flanders and for humanity by sacrificing himself. this is no more unnatural or inconceivable than the self-sacrifice of regulus. but posa wishes to save his friend like a god and not like a common level-headed philistine. he has the soul of a plutarchian hero, and where two ways present themselves, the most natural is for him the most heroic. hence his desperate procedure and its disastrous consequences. to all of which one can give but a qualified assent, the difficulty being that the play is not so constructed as to bring out its author's intention. the character of posa in act iv is a surprise, and a disagreeable surprise. his conduct may harmonize with a theory of antique heroism, but it does not grow naturally out of what precedes. there is no exigency that calls for his heroic foolhardiness. the reader or the spectator can hardly be supposed to know that the famous tenth scene in the third act, the longest and most carefully elaborated in the whole play, does not count. one naturally supposes that it does count, and the only way it can count is to create a hopeful situation of which posa is absolute master. when, therefore, he throws away his advantage and deliberately plunges his friend into a needless danger, in order to make an opportunity for rescuing him at the cost of his own life, one inevitably associates him mentally not with antique heroes but with modern lunatics. a man capable of conceiving such a hero as posa, and defending the conception as true to life, could hardly be expected to adjust his mind easily to such a work as goethe's 'egmont'. in his review of the play, published in 1788, schiller found, indeed, much to praise; but his general praise was so mixed up with general fault-finding as to produce upon the rudolstadt people the impression of a naughty _lèse-majesté_. he divined correctly enough that 'egmont' was to be regarded as a drama of character, rather than of plot or of passion. but egmont's character seemed to him painfully lacking in 'greatness'. egmont, so the criticism runs, really does nothing extraordinary. he is idolized by the people, but the deeds upon which his fame rests have all been done before the curtain rises. in the play he appears as a light-hearted cavalier who affronts us by persistently refusing to take serious things seriously. in particular the review objected to goethe's perversion of history in representing egmont not as a married man with a large family of children but as a bachelor with a bourgeois sweetheart. not that schiller regarded the departure from history as reprehensible in itself. the dramatist has a right to pervert facts for the purpose of exciting sympathy for his hero; but in this case, schiller argued, the effect is to degrade the character of egmont and thus to alienate sympathy. finally the review took exception to egmont's vision of freedom in the form of clärchen; this, schiller thought, was a deplorable plunge into opera at the end of a serious drama. to adjudicate the issue thus sharply drawn between the two great german poets would require some preliminary attention to their fundamental difference of artistic method,--a subject that will concern us in a subsequent chapter. here suffice it to remark that schiller was not entirely in the wrong. while goethe was incomparably the more subtle psychologist, schiller had the better eye, or rather he cared more, for that which is dramatically effective, average human nature being such, as it is. his dramatic instinct told him that egmont was not a very powerful stage-play. its subtle psychology did not impress him so much as its lack of 'greatness'. and then he had his pique against goethe and wished to show the weimarians that _he_ at least could perceive the spots on the sun. goethe's serene comment upon reading the critique was to the effect that the reviewer had analyzed the moral part of the play very well indeed, but in dealing with the poetic aspect of it he had left something to be done by others.[78] the dramatic fragment, 'the misanthrope reconciled', which schiller fished up out of his drawer in 1790 and used, _faute de mieux_, to fill space in the eleventh number of the _thalia_, was begun, as we have seen, in dresden. possibly the theme may have been suggested at mannheim by the problem of staging shakspere's 'timon'. at any rate the theme was congenial for a man who had 'embraced the world in glowing passion and found in his arms a lump of ice'. at weimar he returned to it several times, puzzled over the general plan, added a little here and there, but finally gave it up as a bad subject for dramatic treatment. the published fragment is certainly of no great account. it introduces a misanthrope, hutten by name, who, as feudal lord, treats his dependents handsomely out of sheer contempt for them. when they come to thank him on his birthday, he spurns their gratitude and scolds them, having made up his mind never to be duped again by any show of human emotion. he has brought up his beautiful and dutiful daughter to be an angel of mercy and a paragon of perfection, but he insists that she too shall be a misanthrope like himself. he makes her swear that she will never marry, but she shrewdly tacks on the proviso, 'except with papa's consent'. the exposition shows her duly in love with a cheerful and estimable youth named rosenberg; and the problem is: how will rosenberg manage the misanthrope? that he was to win somehow is evident from the title. in his translations from euripides, which also belong to the period under consideration, schiller aimed partly at the improvement of his own taste. he hoped to familiarize himself with the spirit of the greeks and to acquire something of their manner. he thought that they might teach him simplicity both in expression and in the construction of dramatic plots; and he felt that his style was in need of their chastening influence. of 'the phoenician women' he translated about one-third, but omitted the choruses entirely; of the 'iphigenia in aulis' he translated nearly the whole text, rendering the choruses very freely in rimed lines of uneven length and varying cadence. his work reads smoothly and gives the general effect of euripides, but cannot count as good translation. it was not only that his greek scholarship was deficient, but he lacked patience,--an indispensable virtue for the translator. his real original was not the greek text at all, but the latin version of joshua barnes; and when this appeared to him jejune and unpoetic he sometimes created an original of his own. the other minor writings of the years 1788 and 1789 may be passed over as of little significance. on the poetic side there were three or four occasional poems, and also the rimed epistle called 'the celebrated wife', in which the unfortunate husband of a literary lady pours out the tale of his domestic woes. in prose there were several perfunctory reviews contributed to the _litteratur-zeitung_, and also an anecdote--exhumed from an old chronicle and retold for the _merkur_--relating to a breakfast given to the duke of alva by the countess of schwarzburg in the year 1547. to these may be added, finally, the short story entitled 'play of fate,' also published in the _merkur_, which describes, under a thin disguise of fictitious names, the rise and fall and rehabilitation of karl eugen's former minister, p.h. rieger.[79] footnotes: [footnote 73: letter of july 28, 1787, to körner.] [footnote 74: letter of nov. 19, 1787.] [footnote 75: in the original, lines 145-8, of the earlier version: schöne welt, wo bist du?--kehre wieder, holdes blültenalter der natur! ach! nur in dem feenland der lieder lebt noch deine goldne spur.] [footnote 76: in the original: im fleisz kann dich die biene meistern, in der geschicklichkeit ein wurm dein lehrer sein, dein wissen teilest du mit vorgezogenen geistern, die kunst, o mensch, hast du allein.] [footnote 77: letter of march 17, to körner.] [footnote 78: letter of oct. 1, 1788, goethe to karl august.] [footnote 79: see above, page 135.] chapter xi historical writings der mensch verwandelt sich und flieht von der bühne, seine meinungen verwandeln sich und fliehen mit ihm; die geschichte allein bleibt unausgesetzt auf der bühne, eine unsterbliche bürgerin aller nationen und zeiten.--_first lecture at jena_. schiller's merit as a writer of history has been much discussed and very differently estimated by high authorities. in general one may say that his historical writings have fared at the hands of experts very much like the scientific writings of goethe; both being treated as the rather unimportant incursions of a poet into a field which he had not the training or the patience to cultivate with the best results. niebuhr's adverse opinion is well known and has often been echoed in one form or another by later critics. on the other hand, lovers of the poet are very apt to overestimate the historian, who would probably be seldom heard of to-day if he had not achieved immortal fame by his plays and poems. as it is, his historical writings have become, for better or worse, a part of the classical literature of germany, and as such we have to reckon with them. and the best way to reckon with them is to describe them as objectively as possible and to consider them in relation to the intellectual tendencies of schiller's own time. we shall see that he began a history of the dutch rebellion without knowing dutch or spanish, and without spending any time in a preliminary study of the original sources of information.[80] his 'history of the thirty years' war' was a bread-winning enterprise, hastily executed for a ladies' magazine. for neither work did he draw a full breath. to compare him, therefore, with the modern giants of research, would be quite absurd; and the more absurd since schiller the historian, unlike goethe the scientist, was extremely modest in his self-estimate and fully aware of his limitations on the side of scholarship. of the qualities that go to the making of a great historian he had two,--the philosophic mind and the vivid imagination. but he lacked the spirit of the investigator and had not a sufficient reverence for the naked fact. history interested him for the sake of his theories and his pictures, and rhetoric was his element. this being so it is not strange that we get from him now and then a distorted image. great movements and prominent characters are depicted by him in accordance with his freedom-loving, cosmopolitan preconception; and his study was not to correct this preconception by a survey of all the evidence, but rather to select that which would confirm his view in a striking manner. on the whole, however, the tale of his positive error, as brought to light by the critics, is not as large as one might expect. this chapter will not deal with it at all, but rather with his general method and point of view.[81] 'the defection of the netherlands' was begun in the summer of 1787 and grew out of the reading of watson's 'philip the second'. this book impressed schiller strongly and he attributed its fascination to the working of his own imaginative faculty. he wished that others might see and feel what he had seen and felt. so he began to retell the story in his own way, intending at first only a brief sketch. as he proceeded, he found gaps and contradictions and isolated facts of obscure import. he began to consult the authorities, not so much to increase his store of information as to clear up his doubts. in this way the intended sketch expanded ideally into a six-volume treatise which should present the history of the netherlands from the earliest times down to the establishment of their independence. of the _magnum opus_ thus planned the first volume, the only one that was ever written, appeared in the autumn of 1788, in three books. the first book sketched the history of the low countries down to the spanish domination; the second dealt with the regency of margaret of parma, and the third with the conspiracy of the nobles, ending with the supersession of margaret by the duke of alva, in 1567. thus the most dramatic period of the great struggle was not reached. subsequently, however, the narrative was supplemented by two separate pictures, 'the death of egmont' and 'the siege of antwerp,' which in the edition of 1801 were first printed with the history. letters of schiller indicate that for a while at least he was very enthusiastic in his new pursuit. he found in the seeming capriciousness of history a constant challenge to the philosophic mind, and he enjoyed the imaginative exercise of investing the dry bones with muscles and nerves. it struck him that the inner necessity was much the same in history as in a work of art. he even went so far as to contend that the fame of the historian was on the whole preferable to that of the poet, and to express the opinion that his own nature was more akin to that of montesquieu than to that of sophocles. he felt that he was getting new ideas and expanding his soul at every step. 'really,' he wrote to körner in 1788, 'i find each day that i am pretty well suited to the business i am now carrying on. perhaps there are better men, but where are they? in my hands history is becoming something in many respects different from what it has been.' and so it really was. in point of readableness 'the defection of the netherlands' is vastly superior to any previous historical writing in the german language. the stately march of its paragraphs, each bearing the impress of a serious and lofty mind; the care with which seemingly small matters are logically connected with great issues, the mingling of philosophic reflection with the narrative,--all this gave to the work an air of literary distinction. it was actually interesting, and this was much in a land that had no historical classics whatsoever. to be interesting was what schiller frankly aimed at; he wished to 'convince one portion of his readers that history might be written with fidelity to the facts, but without becoming a trial to the reader's patience; and another portion that it might borrow something from a kindred art without becoming romance'. and he succeeded. in reading him it is easy to see that the poetic habit of conceiving his characters to fit a preconceived scheme, his vivid imagination, his love of sharp contrasts, telling analogies and broad generalizations, occasionally distort the true relation of things. he was an artist rather than a scholar, and one must e'en accept him as such. a letter to karoline von beulwitz puts the matter thus: i shall always be a poor authority for any future investigator who has the misfortune to consult me. but perhaps at the expense of historic truth i shall find readers, and here and there i may hit upon that other kind of truth which is philosophic. history is in general only a magazine for my fancy, and the objects must content themselves with the form, they take under my hands. the animating idea of 'the defection of the netherlands' is the same that goethe found running through all the writings of schiller--the idea of freedom. from the days of his youth 'freedom', however unphilosophically he might think about it, had connoted for his imagination the highest and holiest interest of mankind; and when he began his first historical work his enthusiasm had not yet been sicklied o'er by the events of the paris terror. he saw in the dutch revolt a glorious battle for liberty; the struggle of a small trading population against the proudest, richest and most powerful monarch of the century; a cause seemingly hopeless at first, but growing stronger through pluck, union, tenacity and wise leadership, until the spanish goliath was completely beaten. it was magnificent and schiller desired that his countrymen should feel its magnificence and take to heart its lesson. so he adorned his title-page with an emblem of freedom,--a broad-brimmed hat and a feather upon a pole,--and began his treatise with a bugle-blast that left no doubt of his purpose: 'i have thought it worth while to set up before the world this fair monument of civic strength, in order to waken in the breast of my people a joyous self-consciousness, and to give a fresh and pertinent example of what men may venture for a good cause and may accomplish by united action.' a remarkable passage of the introduction runs as follows: let no one expect to read here of towering, colossal men, or of amazing deeds such as the history of earlier times offers in such abundance. those times are past, those men are no more. in the soft lap of refinement we have allowed the powers to languish which those ages exercised and made necessary. with humble admiration we gaze now at those gigantic forms, as a nerveless old man at the manly sports of youth. not so in the case of this history. the people that we here see upon the stage were the most peaceful in this part of the world, and less capable than their neighbors of that heroic spirit which gives sublimity to even the most paltry action. the pressure of circumstances surprised this people into a knowledge of their own strength, forcing upon them a transitory greatness which did not belong to them and which they perhaps will never again exhibit. so then the strength they manifested has not vanished from among us, and the success which crowned their desperate adventure will not be denied to us if, in the lapse of time, similar occasions call us to similar deeds. one sees from this that schiller is, halting between the poetic and the scientific view of the past, uncertain which way to set his face. the poet in him is inclined to idealize the brave days of old and to mourn that the ancient giants are no more. at the same time he finds that the struggle of the low countries, while not 'heroic', was very remarkable, very instructive and very inspiring. from this observation it is but a step to the recognition of the truth that it is his own conventional notion of 'heroism' that needs revising; that the giants of yore were no taller than those of to-day and that the world's supply of courage and devotion is not running low. it is an interesting fact that the sentence beginning, 'so then the strength they manifested,' was omitted by schiller from the edition of 1801, possibly because the horrors of the revolution had put him out of humor with fighting. but he might well have allowed the words to stand. their truth was soon to be memorably proved by the german uprising against napoleon. a german writer[82] remarks correctly that schiller occupies with kant a middle stage between the older pragmatic historians, upon whom faust[83] pours his scathing ridicule, and the later school of ranke, whose principle was to extinguish self and simply tell what happened and how. he does not moralize like his predecessors, nor is he guilty of treating the distant past with patronizing condescension. at the same time he wishes to instruct and does not hesitate to point out where the instruction is to be found. he aims to be impartial to the extent of giving both sides a hearing, but he imputes motives freely and does not pretend to extinguish self. probably the effort to do so would have seemed to him absurd. his sympathy is of course with the netherlanders, but he writes as a philosophic champion of freedom rather than as a partisan of protestantism. his concern is not to excite indignation at the colossal wickedness of philip and alva, but to show up their colossal folly. as we should expect he devotes his best powers to his portraits, some of which,--as those of margaret, granvella, egmont and orange,--are deservedly famous. at the same time they are subject to correction from the documents. thus the crafty politician, william the silent, in whom there was very little of the strenuous idealist, is presented as a 'second brutus, who, far above timid selfishness, magnanimously renounces his princely station, descends to voluntary poverty, becomes a citizen of the world and consecrates himself to the cause of freedom'. from what has been said it is clear that schiller regarded the writing of history as essentially an exercise of the creative imagination. and such in a sense it really is and always must be, since no historian can divest himself of his own personality. he will inevitably see the events with his own eyes and put his own construction upon them. his very arrangement of his materials, his distribution of lights and shades, his selection of the matters to be recorded and commented upon, will involve a subjective coloring of his narrative. this being so, one cannot reasonably criticize schiller for having his point of view, but only for taking too little trouble in the gathering and verification of his facts. he did not think it important to study his subject from first-hand sources of information. he quotes more than a score of authorities in latin, french and german, but he uses them quite uncritically, and chiefly, it would seem, to give his work a semblance of learning. the facts were for him nothing but the raw material of history; the important thing was their philosophic truth, that is, the intellectual formula that should explain them. in our day we have grown distrustful of the 'philosophy of history', especially of any philosophy that does not rest upon a basis of long and thorough investigation. 'the defection of the netherlands' was very favorably received by the german public. its merits lay on the surface, while its defects were not patent to the casual reader. every one felt that schiller had set a new pattern for historical composition. in his hands history had become literature. with such an achievement to his credit it was natural that his _début_ in jena should be looked forward to in academic circles as a great occasion. feeling that much would be expected of him he prepared with great care his inaugural discourse upon the study of universal history. the address, which was subsequently published in the _merkur_, begins with a vigorous elucidation of the difference between the bread-and-butter scholar and the philosophic thinker. the former is depicted in caustic terms as a narrow, selfish, timorous time-server. he is the enemy of reform and discovery, because he is forever dreading that the enlargement of the human outlook may disturb his little private routine. he cares for truth only so far as it can be turned to his personal gain in the form of money, praise or princely favor. the philosophic thinker, on the other hand, is a joyous lover of his kind. feeling the essential solidarity of all knowledge he seeks ever for the unifying principle. he loves truth for its own sake. every advance of knowledge is welcome to him, and he willingly sees his private edifice go to ruin for the joy of building a new and better one. then the lecture proceeds to describe the splendid progress of the human race. the task of universal history is declared to be the explanation of this evolutionary process. it must show how all things hang together, and, selecting for description those portions of the record which have a more obvious bearing upon the present form of the world, it must seek to bring home to the modern man the full import of his heirship. in this address we begin to trace the influence of kant, whose 'idea of a universal history in a cosmopolitan spirit', published in 1784, was read by schiller with great interest. the leading thoughts of this memorable paper, new then but very familiar now, are that the race and not the individual is nature's concern in her scheme of man's perfectibility; that the only perfection and happiness possible to him are those which he creates for himself by the progressive triumph of reason over instinct; that the fighting-spirit, antagonisms, wars, the madness and the calamity of the individual, are the necessary condition of race-progress; that the goal is a just civil society, which in turn, since man is an animal that needs a master, is inseparable from the idea of a law-governed state. thus, while herder's formula for the great evolutionary process was the upbuilding of the individual man to humanity, that of kant was the preparation of man for a free citizenship which should ultimately embrace the world. by the general bent of his mind schiller was nearer to the humane idealism of herder than to the law-governed collectivism of kant. at the same time we can see from many a sentence in his inaugural address that the far more rigorous logic of the königsberg philosopher had had its effect upon him. in particular he was captivated by the idea that the individual exists for the sake of the race, and that the gruesome antagonisms of history are therefore to be regarded with composure as the birth-pains of the modern man. a striking passage of the lecture runs thus: history, like the homeric zeus, looks down with the same cheerful countenance upon the bloody works of war and upon the peaceful peoples that innocently nourish themselves upon the milk of their herds. however lawlessly the freedom of man may seem to operate upon the course of the world, she gazes calmly at the confused spectacle; for her far-reaching eye discovers even from a distance where this seemingly lawless freedom is led by the cord of necessity.... history saves us from an exaggerated admiration of antiquity and from a childish longing for the past. reminded by her of our own possessions we cease to wish for a return of the lauded golden age of alexander or of caesar. from this way of thinking it seems but a span to the modern scientific point of view; for that, however, neither schiller nor kant was ripe, since both thought it necessary to assume that human history began about six thousand years ago and began substantially as reported in genesis, however the original authentic tradition might have been incrusted with spurious supernaturalism. the explanation of society thus resolved itself for them into the problem of a rational interpretation of the bible. kant believed, like rousseau, in an original paradisaic condition, in which man had lived as a happy, peaceful animal. but while man's emergence from that state was regarded by rousseau as a disaster, the selfish passions, with their resulting antagonisms, were conceived by kant as the _sine qua non_ of rational development. this thought, with its corollaries, was set forth by kant in an essay of the year 1786, entitled 'conjectural beginning of human history'. the fall is there explained as a good thing, the story in genesis being interpreted as a symbol of the emergence of man from the estate of a peaceful but instinct-governed animal to that of a quarrelsome but rational being. kant's line of reasoning interested schiller deeply, and in 1790 he published in the _thalia_ a paper upon the same general subject. it was entitled 'something about the first human society on the basis of the mosaic record'. portions of this essay, with its naïve license of affirmation, would make a modern anthropologist shudder. it begins with a description of the original paradise, from which the infant man was to be led forth into life by providence, his watchful nurse. to quote a few words: by means of hunger and thirst she showed him [let us keep the feminine providence of the german] the need of nourishment; what he required for the satisfaction of his needs she had placed around him in rich abundance; and by the senses of smell and taste she guided him in his choice. by means of a mild climate she had spared his nakedness, and through a universal peace round about him she had secured his defenceless existence. for the preservation of his kind provision was made in the sexual impulse. as plant and animal man was complete.... if, now, we regard the voice of god which forbade the tree of knowledge as simply the voice of instinct warning man away from this tree, then the eating of the fruit becomes merely a defection from instinct, that is, the first manifestation of rational independence, the origin of moral being; and this defection from instinct, which brought moral evil into the world, but at the same time made moral good possible, was incontestably the happiest and greatest event in the history of mankind. it has seemed worth while to linger a moment over these two rather unimportant productions for the sake of the light they throw on schiller's general attitude. one sees that remote antiquity has lost in his eyes something of its old poetic glamour. he is content to explain it like any rationalizing professor. the past interests him mainly for the sake of the present, and of the present he now has a very good opinion,--especially of the goddess of reason. he did not know what a terrible trial was preparing for this goddess and her self-complacent worshippers. ere long he himself was destined to lose a little of his buoyant faith in her and to become in part responsible for the apostasy of many. for the present, however, it was no inchoate romanticism, but a publisher's enterprise, that led him into the study of the middle ages. he had undertaken to edit a great 'collection of historical memoirs'. there were to be several volumes each year for an indefinite time; the volumes to consist of translations from various languages and to cover european history from the twelfth century down. schiller was to supervise the undertaking and furnish the needful introductions. his plans were presently thwarted by illness and then by his increasing interest in philosophic studies; so that after the first few volumes had appeared he withdrew and left the continuation of the 'memoirs' to other hands. of his various contributions to the initial volumes of the 'historical memoirs' a part are mere hack-work and therefore devoid of biographical interest. somewhat different is the case with an elaborate account of the crusades, in which he attempts to show that that great medieval madness,--so it was regarded by the age of enlightenment,--was 'in its origin too natural to excite our surprise and in its consequences too beneficent to convert our displeasure into a very different feeling'. the general argument is that the ancient civilizations were dominated by the idea of the state; they produced excellent greeks and romans but not excellent men. the prestige of the despotic states was destroyed by the great migrations, but it was the crusades which first taught the nations to subordinate patriotism to a higher and broader sentiment. it was then that men learned to fight for an idea of the reason,--for the truth as they saw it. and thus the crusades prepared the way for the reformation. the interest of the essay lies not in the vigor of its logic, which is lame here and there, but in the evidence it affords of schiller's increasing respect for the middle ages. and he went further still. in a preface which he wrote in 1792, for a german translation of vertot's work on the knights of malta, we find a passage which sounds very much like inchoate romanticism: the contempt we feel for that period of superstition, fanaticism and mental slavery betrays not so much the laudable pride of conscious strength as the petty triumph of weakness avenging itself in unimportant mockery for the shame wrung from it by superior merit.... the advantage of clearer ideas, of vanquished prejudice, of more subdued passions, of freer ways of thinking (if we really can claim this credit), costs us the great sacrifice of active virtue, without which our better knowledge can hardly be counted as a gain. the same culture that has extinguished in our brains the fire of fanatical zeal has also smothered the glow of inspiration in our hearts, clipped the wings of our sentiment, and destroyed our doughty energy of character.... granted that the period of the crusades was a long and sad stagnation of culture, and even a return, of europe to its former barbarism; still, humanity had clearly never before been so near to its highest dignity as it was then,--if indeed it is a settled doctrine that the essence of man's dignity is the subordination of his feelings to his ideas. we see that schiller, though he was in no danger of becoming a renegade on the main issue, had his moods of disgust, as goethe and herder had had before him, at the shallow self-complacency of the age of enlightenment. in comparison with these disconnected and more or less perfunctory studies, the 'history of the thirty years' war' seems like a large undertaking. but it was not so conceived at first. while 'the defection of the netherlands' is the fragment of a great project, the 'thirty years' war' is the expansion of a small one. we first hear of it in a letter of december, 1789, wherein schiller, just then casting about eagerly for possibilities of income, informs körner that he is to have four hundred thalers from göschen for an 'essay' upon the thirty years' war, to be published in the 'historical calendar for ladies'. he felicitates himself that the labor will be light, since the material is so abundant and he is to write only for amateurs. the following spring he took up his task, which then grew upon his hands as he proceeded. two books were printed in the 'calendar' for 1791, a third in 1792, the fourth, and also a separate book-edition, in 1793. it met with great favor, the sales running up to seven thousand, and the author winning the name of germany's greatest historian. and, indeed, it does exhibit schiller's historical style at its best, there being here, in comparison with his earlier work, somewhat less of heavy philosophical ballast. the narrative moves more lightly. there is this time not even a pretense of erudite scholarship. he does not quote authorities, rarely indulges in polemic, avoids tedious 'negotiations' and all political disquisitions which might be dull reading to the 'female fellow-citizens' for whom he writes. he endeavors merely to tell his complicated story in a lucid and interesting manner. the third book, which describes the career of gustav adolf from the great battle of breitenfeld, in 1631, to his death at lützen in the following year, is an admirable specimen of vivid historical writing. it may well be doubted whether any successors of schiller have surpassed him in the art of narrating, though they may have been able to correct him here and there in matters of fact. what a telling description, for example, is that of the desperate charge at lützen just after the death of the swedish king! in his last historical work, just as in his first, the burden of schiller's thought is evermore the idea of freedom. the thirty years' war is conceived by him as the successful struggle of german liberty against hapsburg imperialism. upon the abstract merits of the religious controversy he has little to say; the subject evidently does not interest him. he does indeed make himself the champion of protestantism, but only because protestantism is identified in his mind with the august cause of liberty. the protestant princes fought, he tells us, for what they took to be the truth,--whether it really was the truth does not matter. their motives were not always lofty and their historian is not in the least concerned to hide or to gloss over their frequent venality and selfishness. his point of view is that they fought for a higher good than that which their eyes were fixed upon, and this higher good was the advancement of free cosmopolitanism, 'europe', he writes in his introductory reflections, 'emerged unsubdued and free from this terrible war in which, for the first time, it had recognized itself as a connected society of states; and this interest of the states in one another, to which the war first gave rise, would alone be a sufficient gain to reconcile the citizens of the world to its horrors. the hand of industry has gradually obliterated the evil effects of the struggle, but its beneficent consequences have remained.' our historian, it is plain, was very firmly convinced that his own cosmopolitanism was a european finality and was worth all that it had cost. what would he have said if he could have looked ahead a hundred years and beheld the nations still snarling at each other's heels in the same old way! it is pertinent to observe in this connection that schiller's enthusiasm for liberty is quite unaffected by the 'ideas of 1789'. neither in his letters nor elsewhere does he manifest any strong sympathy with the revolutionary aims of the french democracy. liberty is for him the perfect fruitage of the benevolent despotism. it is something that concerns the prince in his relation to some other prince, rather than in relation to his own subjects. of the german people at the time of the thirty years' war he has but little to say, his thoughts being fixed always upon the leaders. his great hero is gustav adolf, whom he regards at first as the unselfish champion of german freedom. little by little, however, the portrait of the king undergoes a change: the ideal knight of protestantism shades off into the earthy politician and selfish conqueror. and when at last death overtakes him his historian is prepared to admit that the event was fortunate for his own royal renown and for the welfare of germany. a part of his final estimate runs thus: unmistakably the ambition of the swedish monarch aimed at such power in germany as was incompatible with the freedom of the estates, and at a permanent possession in the heart of the empire. his goal was the imperial throne; and this dignity, supported and made efficient by his activity, was in his hands liable to far greater abuse than was to be feared from the race of hapsburg. a foreigner by birth, brought up in the maxims of absolutism, and in his pious enthusiasm a declared enemy of all papists, he was not the man to guard the sanctuary of the german constitution, or to respect the freedom of the estates. after the death of gustav adolf the focus of interest is wallenstein, and when wallenstein is disposed of the history soon becomes a lean and hurried summary, the perfunctory character of which is quite obvious to the reader. footnotes: [footnote 80: it is to be taken into consideration that the 'sources', as the word is now understood, were for the most part inaccessible in the eighteenth century.] [footnote 81: the subject which is here necessarily treated in a general way is discussed much more fully and with admirable balance by k. tomaschek, "schiller in seinem verhältnis zur wissenschaft", wien, 1862. another excellent book, if used with some care, is j. janssen's "schiller als historiker", freiburg, 1879.] [footnote 82: otto brahm, "schiller", ii, 209.] [footnote 83: was ihr den geist der zeiten heiszt, das ist im grund der herren eigner geist in dem die zeiten sich bespiegeln.--_'faust', lines 577-8_.] chapter xii dark days within and without 1791-1794 zu einer zeit, wo das leben anfing, mir seinen ganzen wert zu zeigen, wo ich nahe dabei war, zwischen vernunft und phantasie in mir ein zartes und ewiges band zu knüpfen,... nahte sich mir der tod.--_letter of 1791._ the year 1790 was the happiest of schiller's life. for a little while, at last, fate became supremely kind to him. the reality of wedlock more than fulfilled his dreams, and it seemed as if all his vague _malheur d'être poète_ were about to be buried in the deep bosom of connubial beatitude. 'we lead the blessedest life together', he wrote to christophine reinwald in may, 'and i no longer know my former self.' and a month later to wilhelm von wolzogen: 'my lotte grows dearer to me every day; i can say that i am just beginning to prize my life, since domestic happiness beautifies it for me.' his income, indeed, was pitifully small, but his courage was great, his fame well grounded, and there were prospects here and there. from the first he had regarded the jena professorship only as a makeshift. to bring variety into his academic routine he began, in the summer term of 1790, to lecture upon the theory of tragedy, developing the subject from his own brain and paying little attention to the authorities. in the autumn these lectures were resumed, and soon the aesthetic philosopher began to prevail over the historian. and now came his great calamity. in reading the later writings of schiller, whether philosophical or poetical, it is difficult to imagine them the work of an invalid, produced in the intervals of physical suffering such as would utterly have broken the courage of a less resolute man. but so it was. the early winter of 1791 brought with it a disastrous illness which shattered his health, doomed him for the rest of his days to an incessant battle with disease and finally carried him away prematurely at the age of forty-five. among the acquaintances that he had made through his connection with the lengefeld family was a little group of people in erfurt. there were karoline von dacheröden and her lover, wilhelm von humboldt, who was destined to become schiller's intimate friend and also his faithful comrade in the field of aesthetic philosophizing. then there was the influential baron karl theodor von dalberg, a brother of the mannheim intendant. this elder dalberg, who some years later became dubiously prominent in connection with napoleon's confederation of the rhine, was now residing at erfurt as coadjutor to the elector of mainz and expecting to become elector himself on the death of his superior. he was an energetic, good-natured man, not free from ostentatious fussiness, and he enjoyed the rôle of maecenas. in schiller and lotte he took a deep interest, promising to do something handsome for them when he should come to power at mainz. while spending his vacation with these erfurt friends, at the close of the year 1790, schiller took a cold which brought on an attack of pneumonia. an erfurt doctor treated the case lightly and unskillfully and sent him back half cured to jena, where he resumed his lectures. now came a second and sharper attack, with hemorrhage and other alarming symptoms. the doctors operated upon him as best they knew, with leeches and phlebotomy and purgatives and vomitives, and came very near killing him. for days he lay at the point of death, a few faithful students sharing the young wife's anxious vigil at his bedside. his convalescence was slow and in the end imperfect, leaving him with wasted strength, a pain in the right lung and a serious difficulty in breathing. of course it was all up with his lecturing; but he easily obtained a release for the summer term from the sympathetic duke of weimar. in march he was well enough to take up the reading of kant's then recently published 'critique of the judgment', and a little later to try his hand at translating from the aeneid in stanzas and to write a rejoinder to the 'anticritique' of the aggrieved bürger. this unfortunate feud with bürger grew out of a magisterial review published by schiller in 1791; a review which, while dignified in tone and purporting to speak solely in the interest of the lyric art, amounted to a scathing condemnation of bürger's character. after expatiating upon the high vocation of the poet, the necessity of his thinking and feeling nobly, and the importance of his giving only his idealized self, the anonymous critic proceeded to comment upon bürger's frequent lapses from good taste, his crudities, indecencies and vulgar ding-dongs, and to refer these things with remorseless directness to personal defects. the criticism was just and had all the other merits save discretion and urbanity, goethe was pleased with it before he knew who wrote it,[84] and eleven years later schiller saw nothing in it to change. in writing it, as a matter of fact, he was only breaking the rod over his own early self; for in his stuttgart 'anthology' he had committed nearly every sin for which now, from the serene heights of a better artistic insight, he castigated his victim. to poor bürger, whose life was just then bitter enough at the best, the review was a terrible blow. he at once published a reply, which is also very good reading in its way, but might have been made much more spicy had he known the name of his adversary. schiller's final rejoinder added nothing of importance to the discussion.[85] this short digression leads naturally to another. while still at weimar schiller received a visit from bürger, and the two agreed to vie with each other in a translation from vergil. schiller chose for his experiment the eight-line stanza which he was proposing to use in an epic upon frederick the great. this 'fredericiad' was much on his mind in the spring of 1789. his plan was to center his story about some ominous juncture in frederick's career (say the battle of kollin), and write a poem which should exhibit in lightly-flowing stanzas the 'finest flower' of eighteenth-century civilization.[86] albeit intensely modern it was to have the indispensable epic 'machinery'. nothing came of the project, but a year later he was still ruminating upon it and declared that he should not be truly happy until he was again making verses. instead of attempting an original epic, however, he now began to translate from the aeneid, and this light and congenial labor continued to occupy him for a year or more after the break-down of his health. he finally completed two books, the second and fourth. the translation is sonorous and otherwise readable, but it is not vergil and does not produce the effect of vergil. the breaking up of the matter into stanzas, each having a unity of its own, led to additions, omissions and perversions,--there are 2104 lines in the translation to 1509 in the original,--and substituted an interrupted romantic cadence for the stately continuous roll of the hexameter. the opening lines of the second book will serve as well as any others to illustrate schiller's method as a translator: conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant. inde toro pater aeneas sic orsus ab alto: 'infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem, trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnum eruerint danai; quaeque ipse miserrima vidi et quorum pars magna fui.' schiller's version runs thus: der ganze saal war ohr, jedweder mund verschlossen, und fürst aeneas, hingegossen auf hohem polstersitz, begann: dein wille, königin, macht wunden wieder bluten, die keine sprache schildern kann: wie trojas stadt verging in feuerfluten, den jammer willst du wissen, die gefahr, wovon ich zeuge, ach, und meistens opfer war. as for the 'fredericiad', it never got beyond the status of a plan. by november, 1791, schiller had concluded that gustav adolf would be a better subject for an epic,--he could get up no enthusiasm for unser fritz and shrank from the 'gigantic labor of idealizing him'. soon after this he seems to have dropped altogether the idea of writing an epic. in the spring of 1791, when he had grown strong enough to think of attacking the second installment of the 'thirty years' war', schiller took up his abode in rudolstadt; and there, in may, he was prostrated by a second illness which was worse than the first. his life was despaired of, he bade his friends farewell and the report went out from jena that he was dead. after the crisis was past came weary weeks of lassitude and pain, with no possibility of writing or reading. in july he took the waters at karlsbad, with some slight benefit. by autumn he was well enough to do the promised continuation of his history and to lay plans with göschen for a _new thalia_ to begin with the next year. but he was now in desperate straits for money. his illness had been very costly and the cessation of work had brought a cessation of income. he was in debt to various friends, and the duke of weimar was too poor to help him. saddest of all, his beloved wife's health was broken with anxiety and watching. 'it is a joy to me', he wrote to körner in october, 'even when i am busy, to think that she is near me. her dear life and influence round about me, the childlike purity of her soul and the warmth of her love, give me a repose and serenity that would otherwise be impossible in my hypochondriac condition. if we were only well we should need nothing else to live like the gods.' it was a dark juncture, darker far than that of 1784, and now as then help came unexpectedly from afar. it came this time from denmark. the danish author baggesen had visited jena the previous year and returned home a fervid admirer of schiller. at copenhagen he had imparted his enthusiasm to count schimmelmann and the duke of holstein-augustenburg, who, with their wives, proceeded to found a sort of schiller-sect. full of the time's generous ardor for high and humane ideas, they were just about to give a rustic fête in honor of their great german poet, when the news of his death arrived. they met with heavy hearts and sang the 'song to joy', with an added stanza by baggesen, wherein they pledged themselves to 'be faithful to schiller's spirit until they should meet above'. when they learned a little later that the author of the 'song' was alive, after all, and very much in need of money, the two noblemen immediately wrote him a joint letter, offering him, in language of admirable delicacy, a gift of a thousand thalers a year for three years, with no conditions whatever. he was simply to give himself needed rest and follow the bent of his mind, free from all anxiety. should he choose to come to copenhagen they assured him that he would find loyal friends and admirers, and a position in the government service if he desired it. this timely windfall 'from the clouds' put an end to the misery of distress about money. for the first time in his life schiller found himself free to consult inclination in the forming of his plans and the disposition of his time. without hesitation he gratefully accepted the gift and resolved now at last to take up the study of kant and fathom him, though it should require three years. a strange resolution, it would seem, for a sick poet! many have judged it unwise and have deprecated that long immersion in kantian metaphysic. but schiller was the best judge of his own needs, and how he felt about the matter appears very clearly from a letter that he wrote to körner a few months later: i am full of eagerness for some poetic task and particularly my pen is itching to be at 'wallenstein.' really it is only in art itself that i feel my strength. in theorizing i have to plague myself all the while about principles. there i am only a dilettante. but it is precisely for the sake of artistic creation that i wish to philosophize. criticism must repair the damage it has done me. and it has done me great damage indeed; for i miss in myself these many years that boldness, that living fire, that was mine before i knew a rule. now i see myself in the act of creating and fashioning; i observe the play of inspiration, and my imagination works less freely, since it is conscious of being watched. but if i once reach the point where artistic procedure becomes natural, like education for the well-nurtured man, then my fancy will get back its old freedom, and know no bounds but those of its own making. and so it was destined to be. his philosophic studies, pursued with tireless zeal for a period of three or four years, gave him the self-assurance that he hoped for. they created for him at least, if not for all men everywhere, a poetical _modus vivendi_ between natural impulse and artistic rule. 'nature' learned to wear the fetters of art without feeling them as fetters. at last he grew weary of theorizing; but his later plays, produced in rapid succession, each unlike the other and all characterized by a remarkable imaginative breadth and freedom, bear witness to the quantity of artistic energy stored up during this period of artistic self-repression. a few words of biography will suffice for the goings and comings of this kantian period, which was for schiller a period of quiet study, eager discussion and laborious authorship. at first he continued to reside in jena. early in 1792 he started the _new thalia_, and this he used for the publication of his earlier aesthetic lucubrations. with the perfunctory conclusion of the 'thirty years' war', in september, his work as a historian virtually came to an end. he now began to lecture again, but gave only an aesthetic _privatissimum_ in his own room. he went out of the house hardly five times during the whole winter, and when spring came his health was again very precarious. he now determined to try the effect upon body and soul of the milder climate of his native suabia. he set out in august and took the precaution to halt in heilbronn, not knowing what brutality the duke of württemberg might still be capable of. on receiving the blessed assurance that his highness would 'ignore' him, he continued on his way to ludwigsburg, where a son was born, to him in september. he remained in ludwigsburg during the winter in pleasant intercourse with his family and friends. in october karl eugen went to his reward. 'the death of the old herod', schiller wrote to körner, 'does not concern me or my family, except that all who have to do directly, like my father, with the head of the state, are glad that they now have a man before them.'[87] one of the first important official acts of the new duke was to abolish the karlschule; but this did not happen until after schiller had visited the scene of his former woes, in the role of distinguished son, and had received the enthusiastic plaudits of the four hundred students. it was here in ludwigsburg that his ripest philosophic work, the 'letters upon aesthetic education' came into being. in the spring he spent some weeks in stuttgart, where dannecker began to model the famous bust that now adorns the weimar library. in stuttgart he made the acquaintance of the enterprising publisher cotta, who wished him to undertake the editorship of a great political journal. but another plan lay nearer to schiller's heart, and before he left suabia he had arranged with cotta to edit a high-class literary magazine to be known as _die horen_. in may, 1794, he returned to jena, glad to have escaped at last from his dear, distracting fatherland and to be once more at home. his health had not improved, and he had now become reconciled in a measure to the doom of the invalid. but although he knew that the death-mark was upon him, the knowledge only spurred him to more eager activity.[88] he felt that he had a great work to do and that the time might be short. by this time his acquaintance with humboldt had ripened into a warm friendship. 'what a life it will be', he wrote to korner, 'when you come here and complete the triad. humboldt is for me an infinitely agreeable and at the same time useful acquaintance; for in conversation with him all my ideas move happily and move quickly. there is in his character a totality that is rarely seen and that, except in him, i have found only in you.' after his return to jena he lectured no more, but threw all his energy into the new journal. he prepared an alluring prospectus and invited the cooperation of all the best writers in germany. among these was goethe, who sent a favorable reply. and thus began a correspondence which presently led, as all the world knows, to an ever memorable friendship. the activities centering in the _horen_ ushered in a new literary epoch, the epoch of germany's brief leadership in modern literature. thus the period of his kantian studies, a time of tremendous political excitement in europe, was for schiller a quiet period of intense thinking and of eager debate with like-minded friends, upon the abstruse questions of aesthetic theory. the turmoil of the revolution affected him hardly at all. there was nothing of the democrat about him. with all his devotion to liberty and with all his poetic fondness for republicanism, he remained at heart a devoted monarchist. all his life, nearly, he had lived with aristocrats, and he himself had the temper of an aristocrat. there is no evidence in his letters that he ever really sympathized with the french people, even during the early days of the revolution, in their practical program of 'liberty, equality and fraternity'. his notion of liberty was at no time a definite political concept, but always a rainbow in the clouds,--something to rave and philosophize over. of human brotherhood he had sung most affectingly in the 'song to joy', but it was only a poetic kiss that he had ready for all mankind. he would have been amazed if any plebeian stranger had proposed to take him at his word. as for equality, there is no evidence that it entered as a factor or an ideal into his scheme of man's better time to come. it was thus perfectly natural, when the proceedings were instituted against the ill-fated louis the sixteenth, that schiller should take the part of the accused. the fierce determination of the french democracy to exact a reckoning from their sovereign, not so much for what _he_ had done as for ages of accumulated wrong, appeared to him the very madness of injustice. in december, 1792, he planned to write a book or a pamphlet in defence of the king, and have it translated into french for the purpose of influencing public opinion in paris.[89] he seems actually to have begun the work, but the fate of the unlucky bourbon was swifter than the pen of his german defender. schiller's horror of the regicide knew no bounds. 'these two weeks past', he wrote on february 8, 1793, 'i can read no more french papers, so disgusted am i with these wretched executioners.' the ensuing events of the terror intensified this feeling. in speaking of the year 1793, karoline von wolzogen has this to say of her brother-in-law: he regarded the french revolution as the effect of passion and not as a work of wisdom, which alone could produce true freedom. he admitted, indeed, that many ideas which had previously been found only in books and in the heads of enlightened men, were now matters of public discussion; but, he said, the real principles which must underlie a truly happy civil constitution are not yet so common among men; they are found (pointing to a copy of kant's 'critique' that lay on the table) nowhere else but here. the french republic will cease as quickly as it has come into being. the republican constitution will give rise to a state of anarchy, and sooner or later a capable strong man will appear from some quarter and make himself master not only of france but also, perhaps, of a large part of europe.[90] if this remarkable prediction of napoleon is rightly reported and rightly dated by the baroness von wolzogen, one can hardly suppose that schiller was very much elated when he read in a paper, towards the close of the year 1792, that he had been made an honorary citizen of the french republic. under a law passed in august of that year,--_l'an premier de la liberté_,--the name and rights of a french citizen were bestowed upon a number of foreigners who had 'consecrated their arms and their vigils to defending the cause of the people against the despotism of kings'. a motley band of heroes had been selected for this honor,--the names of washington and wilberforce and kosciusko being put to pickle in the same brine with those of pestalozzi, j. h. campe, klopstock and anacharsis cloots,--and the bill was about to pass when a deputy arose,--he must have been an alsatian,--and proposed to add the name of m. gille, _publiciste allemand_. the amendment was accepted, and a few weeks later minister roland transmitted to 'm. gille' an official diploma of french citizenship. it took the postal authorities of germany some six years to deliver the letter, and when at last they succeeded, its recipient was less than ever in a mood to be overjoyed at the well-meant distinction that had been conferred upon him by the french republicans. the progress of the revolution appeared to schiller to endanger the higher interests of civilization. he was too close to it for a serenely impartial view. had it been an occurrence of the sixteenth century, he would have been just the man to philosophize over it and to show that in this case, again, "the frenzy of the nations was the statesmanship of fate". as it was, the unrest of the people, and their increasing absorption in questions of mere politics, disgusted him. he felt that a counteragent was needed. and so, declining cotta's offer anent the political journal, and thus leaving the famous _allgemeine zeitung_ to begin its career a few years later under other hands, he chose instead to found the _horen_, which was to exclude politics altogether and induce people, if possible, to think of something else. he saw that the times were unpropitious for his enterprise, but felt that it was for that very reason the more urgently needed. in announcing the _horen_ to the public in 1795 he wrote: the more the minds of men are excited, shut in and subjugated by the narrow interests of the present, the more urgent is a general and higher interest in that which is purely human and superior to all influences of the time; an interest which shall set men free again and unite the politically divided world under the banner of truth and beauty. this is the point of view from which the authors of the _horen_ wish it to be regarded. the journal is to be devoted to cheerful and passionless entertainment, and to offer the mind and heart of its readers, now angered and depressed by the events of the day, a pleasant diversion. in the midst of this political tumult it will form for the muses and graces a little intimate circle, from which everything will be banished that is stamped with the impure spirit of partisanship. many a modern reader will be inclined, perhaps, to smile at this deliverance and to see in it a fatuous misjudgment of the relative importance of things. the french revolution versus a spray of aesthetic rose-water! but we must not be too hasty. posterity has no better criterion for judging great men than the criterion of service. and service is a question of vocation. as the matter is put by goethe, who himself a little later took refuge from the _misère_ of the napoleonic epoch in the contemplative poetry of the orient: 'man may seek his higher destiny on earth or in heaven, in the present or in the future; yet for that reason he remains exposed to constant wavering within and to continual disturbance from without, until he once for all makes up his mind to declare that that is right which is in accordance with his own nature,'[91] it was not in schiller to be a political journalist or a pamphleteer. in that field he would have wasted his splendid energy. he knew what he could do best; and it was well for his country and for the world that he chose to withdraw from the turmoil of the revolution and prepare himself for 'wallenstein' and 'william tell'. footnotes: [footnote 84: so, at least, schiller states in a letter of march 3, 1791, to körner.] [footnote 85: the original review, together with bürger's reply and schiller's rejoinder, are printed in sämmtliche schriften, vi, 314 ff.] [footnote 86: the plan is very fully discussed in a letter of march 10, 1789, to körner.] [footnote 87: on the other hand, wilhelm von hoven, who was with schiller at the time, represents him as deeply touched by the death of duke karl and as expressing himself thus: "da ruht er also, dieser rastlos thätig gewesene mann. er hatte grosze fehler als regent, gröszere als mensch, aber die ersteren wurden vor seinen groszen eigenschaften weit überwogen, und das andenken an die letzteren musz mit dem toten begraben werden; darum sage ich dir, wenn du, da er nun dort liegt, jetzt noch nachteilig von ihm sprechen hörst, traue diesem menschen nicht: er ist kein guter, wenigstens kein edler mensch." cf. kuno fischer, "schiller-schriften", i, 153, and karoline von wolzogen, "schillers leben", achter abschnitt.] [footnote 88: a letter of may 24, 1791, contains the brave words: "ich habe mehr als einmal dem tod ins gesicht gesehen, und mein mut ist dadurch gestärkt worden."] [footnote 89: letter of december 21, to körner.] [footnote 90: "schillers leben", achter abschnitt.] [footnote 91: "dichtung und wahrheit", elftes buch.] chapter xiii aesthetic writings es ist gewisz von keinem sterblichen kein gröszeres wort gesprochen als dieses kantische, was zugleich der inhalt seiner ganzen philosophie ist: bestimme dich aus dir selbst. _letter of 1793._ from a quotation in the preceding chapter we have seen what schiller hoped for when he resolved to grapple with the kantian philosophy. he was in pursuit of that which would help him as a poet. he felt that a little philosophy had done him harm by quenching his inner fire and destroying his artistic spontaneity. the rules were continually coming between him and his creative impulses. his hope was that more philosophy would repair the damage by making the principles of art so clear and so familiar that they would become as second nature, and therefore cease to be felt as a clog or an interference. this expectation, looking at the matter _a priori,_ was reasonable enough. looking at it retrospectively, goethe came to the conclusion, as is well known, that schiller's philosophic bent had injured his poetry by teaching him to 'regard the idea as higher than all nature'. goethe thought it 'depressing to see how such an extraordinarily gifted man had tormented himself with philosophic modes of thought that could be of no use to him'.[92] but this does not tell the whole story, notwithstanding the greatness of the authority. to assert that all philosophy is always harmful to a poet would be to assert the most patent nonsense. goethe himself at one time found help and inspiration in spinoza, the dryest and most abstract of thinkers;[93] and after all, 'nature' comes off about as well in 'wallenstein' as in 'faust'. it is a question of personal endowment, of what the mind can assimilate and turn to account. there are many kinds of the poetic temper, the intellectual element blending variously with the emotional, the instinctive and the visional. for schiller poetry was not 'somnambulism', but a very deliberate process; wherefore it was quite natural for him to expect that a season of philosophic study would be good for him. so he set out to fathom the laws of beauty; assuming, of course, that there must be such laws and that they must be, in some sense or other, laws of human nature. to follow him critically in all the by-ways of his theorizing would require a treatise; and the treatise would be dull reading, except, peradventure, to such as might be specially interested in the history of aesthetic discussion. in the end, too, it would shed but little light upon schiller's later plays, which were in no sense the offspring of theory and were influenced only in a very general way by their author's previous philosophical studies. to understand the poet's development it is nowise necessary to lose one's self with him in the serbonian bog of metaphysic. on the other hand, it _will_ be useful to know what the problems were that chiefly interested him, and to see how he attacked them and what conclusions he arrived at. with the soundness of his reasoning and the final value of his contributions to the literature of aesthetics we need hardly concern ourselves at all; since the scientific questions involved are differently stated and differently approached at the present time.[94] the pre-kantian stage of schiller's aesthetic philosophy is of quite minor importance. he obtained his original stock of ideas at the stuttgart academy from ferguson's 'institutes', as translated by garve. in ferguson, who rested strongly upon shaftesbury, no line was drawn between the moral and the aesthetic domain. it was taught that all truth is beauty and that 'the most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth'. perfection was made to depend on harmony and proportion; and moral beauty upon the harmony of the individual soul with the general system of things. wrong action was regarded as discord, imperfection. virtue, being a disposition toward the general harmony, necessarily meant happiness. thoughts of this kind, mixed up with vague ideas of a pre-established harmony, constituted the staple of schiller's early philosophizing. the identity of the good, the true and the beautiful, was for him the highest of all generalizations, though more a matter of pious emotion than of close thinking. nor do we observe any noteworthy change of attitude in the minor philosophic writings, such as the letters of julius and raphael, and the second book of 'the ghostseer',--which he published prior to his acquaintance with kant. in these it is always the moralist that speaks, and the great question is the bearing of skepticism on individual happiness. but by the end of his first year in weimar the moralist had begun to retreat before the aesthetic philosopher. for the author of 'the gods of greece' and 'the artists', it is evident that the beautiful has become the corner-stone of the temple. he saw before him all at once a new region that invited exploration. if art had played such a commanding role in the history of the world, it was evidently of the greatest importance to understand it. it was this feeling for the dignity of art, as the greatest of factors in human perfectibility, that led him to devote the leisure afforded by his danish pension to a thorough study of kantian aesthetics. he began quite independently, as we have seen, with a course of lectures upon the theory of tragedy. the lectures were never published, but the cream of them is probably contained in two essays, 'on the rational basis of pleasure in tragic themes', and 'on the tragic art', which were contributed to the _new thalia_ in 1792. in the former schiller first combats the idea that art has any higher aim than the giving of pleasure. its aim, he argues, is not morality but 'free pleasure', the 'free' meaning subject to no law but its own. if morality is made its final aim, it ceases to be 'free'. then the essay goes on to discuss the _crux_ of our feeling pleasure in painful representations. all pleasure, we read, comes from the perception of _zweckmäszigkeit_, that is, the quality of being adapted to the furtherance of an end. since man is meant to be happy and naturally seeks happiness, human suffering affects us primarily as a 'maladaptation', and so gives us pain. but in this very pain our reason recognizes a higher 'adaptation', since we are incited by it to activity. we know that it is good for us and for society; and so we take pleasure in our own pain. the total effect of tragedy depends upon the proportion in which this higher sense of adaptation is present. the important thing to notice in this argument is that aesthetic judgments are made to depend upon concepts of the mind. the reason, with its abstractions of 'fitness' and what not, is regarded as the prior and the dominating factor. in the second of the two essays, however, we find a distinct recognition of the fact that emotional excitement may give pleasure in and of itself. illustrations are brought in,--such as the passion for gaming and for dangerous adventure, and the general love of ghost stories and tales of crime,--which go to show that schiller by no means overlooked the non-rational element in the pleasure afforded by tragedy. nevertheless he seems to have attached very little importance to that element, for he goes on to observe that we know only two sources of pleasure, namely, the satisfaction of our bent for happiness (_glückseligkeitstrieb_), and the fulfillment of moral laws. as the pleasure we take in acted or narrated suffering cannot proceed from the former, it must spring from the latter and do its work by gratifying the 'bent for activity' _(thätigkeitstrieb)_, which is a moral bent.--after a long tussle with such hazy abstractions the essayist attempts a working definition and practical discussion of tragedy. this part of the essay is still eminently readable, but need not be analyzed here. sufficient to say that schiller regards the excitation of 'sympathy' as the sole aim of tragedy. he has nothing to say of the aristotelian 'fear' or 'katharsis'; in fact he did not make the acquaintance of aristotle until 1797.[95] it would be next in order to consider the lectures of 1792-93, but unluckily they are known only from the notes of a student.[96] as published in 1806 they bear the impress of schiller's mind, but are too brief and summary to be counted among his works. they show that by 1793 he had come to feel at home in the field of aesthetic speculation. he had read kant and moritz and burke, and was ready with his criticisms. in particular, he had found what he regarded as a weak point in the system of kant, who had not only made no attempt to establish an objective criterion of beauty, but had summarily dismissed the whole problem as obviously hopeless. schiller felt that, if this were so, there was no firm foundation anywhere, and all aesthetic judgments were reduced to a matter of taste,--which was of course a very unwelcome conclusion. in the belief that he had found the missing link he planned, toward the end of 1792, a treatise to be known as 'kallias, or concerning beauty'. it was to take the form of a dialogue, to be written in a pleasing style, with a plenty of illustration,--merits to which kant could lay no claim,--and to review the whole history of aesthetic theorizing. this plan was finally given up, but a series of rather abstruse letters to körner, beginning in january, 1793, may be regarded as preparatory studies for the contemplated treatise. schiller's idea was, evidently, to blaze a private trail through the jungle of kantian theory, with körner's critical assistance, and then to return and convert the trail into an agreeable road for the general reader. in the end he chose a different form than that of the socratic dialogue for the literary presentation of his doctrine, but what he wrote subsequently was based partly at least upon conclusions that he had reached through his correspondence with körner; wherefore it will be well to look a little more closely, at this point, into his quarrel with the königsberg philosophy. as is well known, kant placed the aesthetic faculty under the jurisdiction of the 'judgment', which he regarded as a sort of connecting link between the pure reason and the practical reason, that is, between cognition and volition. a judgment is teleologic, according to his scheme, if it implies a pre-existing notion to which the object is expected to conform; it is aesthetic when pleasure or pain is produced directly by the object itself. in the good and the agreeable we have an interest,--we will the former and desire the latter. the beautiful, on the other hand, is that which pleases without appealing to any interest (_interesseloses wohlgefalien_). this is its character under the category of quality. under that of quantity it is a universal pleasure; under that of relation, a form of adaptation (_zweckmäszigkeit_), with no end present to the mind. finally, under the fourth category--modality--it is 'necessary', being determined not by any objective criterion, but by the _sensus communis_ of mankind, that is, their agreement in taste. for kant, then, the whole matter of aesthetics is a subjective matter. he does not inquire what it is that makes objects beautiful, but how it is that we 'judge' them to be beautiful. while his predecessors made the impression of the beautiful to depend upon objective attributes of form, proportion, harmony, completeness and the like, he insisted that the essence of beauty was to please without reference to any such intellectual concept whatever. his terminology was not very happy, since a judgment that has nothing to do with the intellect is not a judgment at all, but a feeling; nevertheless his system brought out clearly,--and this is perhaps his most important merit in the domain of aesthetics,--the necessity of distinguishing more sharply between the beautiful, on the one hand, and the good and agreeable, on the other. but in expounding his central doctrine, that beauty cannot depend upon a mental concept, he is not quite consistent; for he recognizes 'adaptation' as a form of beauty, and adaptation is a concept of the mind. to meet this difficulty he makes a distinction between free beauty (_pulchritudo vaga_) and adherent beauty (_pulchritudo adhaerens_), the latter being mixed up with the good or the desirable. even a generic or a normative concept was for him fatal to the idea of pure beauty. thus pure beauty could not be affirmed of a horse, because one inevitably has in his mind an antecedent notion as to how a horse ought to look. again, there could be no such thing as pure beauty,--at the best only adherent beauty,--in a moral action, since a moral action does not please in and of itself. at the same time kant held that the highest use of beauty is to symbolize moral truth, and in illustrating the possibilities of this symbolism he indulged in some rather fanciful speculations. now we can easily understand that schiller, notwithstanding all his admiration of kant and his prompt recognition of the far-reaching importance of kant's doctrine, could not be perfectly satisfied with a philosophy which decreed that an arabesque is more beautiful than any woman, and that morality cannot be beautiful at all, except in some mystical poetic sense. nor could he be content with kant's _sensus communis aestheticus_, which seemed to leave the beautiful finally a matter of taste. his mental attitude is clearly brought to view in a letter of february 9, 1793, to the prince of augustenburg. after speaking warmly of kant's great service to philosophy, he describes thus the problem which kant regarded as impossible of solution and which he himself, schiller, was bold enough to attempt: when i consider how closely our feeling for the beautiful and the great is connected with the noblest part of our being, it is impossible for me to regard this feeling as a mere subjective play of the emotional faculty, capable of none but empirical rules. it seems to me that beauty too, as well as truth and right, must rest upon eternal foundations, and that the original laws of the reason must also be the laws of taste. it is true that the circumstance of our feeling beauty and not cognizing it seems to cut off all hope of our finding a universal law for it, because every judgment emanating from this source is a judgment of experience. as a rule people accept an explanation of beauty only because it harmonizes in particular cases with the verdict of feeling; whereas, if there were really such a thing as the cognition of beauty from principles, we should trust the verdict of feeling because it coincides with our explanation of the beautiful. instead of testing and correcting our feelings by means of principles, we test aesthetic principles by our feelings. so then schiller attacked his problem in the aforementioned letters to körner and was soon able to announce his solution: beauty is nothing else than freedom-in-the-appearance (_freiheit in der erscheinung_). to make clear the steps by which he arrived at that formula and the wealth of meaning that it contained for him would require a fuller analysis of his argument than there is space for in this chapter. suffice it to say that he now fully accepts the dogma of kant that beauty cannot depend upon a mental concept,--the feeling of pleasure is the prior fact. at the same time he has an unshakable conviction that beauty must somehow fall under the laws of reason. he gets rid of the _crux_ by taking the aesthetic faculty away from the jurisdiction of kant's rather mysterious 'judgment', and turning it over to the 'practical reason'. his argument is that the practical reason demands freedom, just as the 'pure' or theoretic reason demands rationality. freedom is the form which the practical reason instinctively applies upon presentation of an object. it is satisfied when, and only when, the object is free, autonomous, self-determined. he then propounds his theory that beauty is simply an analogon of moral freedom. on the presentation of an object the practical reason (_i.e._, the will) may banish for the time being all concepts of the pure reason, may assume complete control and ask no other question than whether the object is free, self-determined, autonomous. if, then, the object appears to be free, to follow no law but its own, the practical reason is satisfied; the effect is pleasurable and we call it beauty. schiller is careful to point out that it is all a question of appearance: the object is not really free,--since freedom abides only in the supersensual world,--but the practical reason imputes or lends freedom to it. hence beauty is freedom in the appearance. in a letter of february 23, 1793, he applies his dogma to an exposition of the relation between nature and art. the problem of the artist in the representation of an object, so the theory runs, is to convey a suggestion of freedom, that is, of not-being-determined-from-without. this he can only do by making the object appear to be determined from within, in other words, to follow its own law. it must have a law and obey it, while seeming to be free. the law of the object is what is disclosed by technique, which is thus the basis of our impression of freedom. starting from kant's saying that nature is beautiful when it looks like art, and art beautiful when it looks like nature, schiller gives a large number of concrete illustrations of his theory. thus a vase is beautiful when, without prejudice to the vase-idea, it looks like a free play of nature. a birch is beautiful when it is tall and slender, an oak when it is crooked; the shape in either case expressing the nature of the tree when it follows nature's law. 'therefore', he concludes his illustrations, 'the empire of taste is the empire of freedom; the beautiful world of sense being the happiest symbol of what the moral world should be, and every beautiful object about me being a happy citizen who calls out: be free like me.' it did not escape our theorist that his hard-won criterion of beauty was after all, apparently, an idea of the reason. he was however prepared to meet this difficulty and promised to do so in a future letter. but the aesthetic correspondence with körner was not continued beyond february. the project of the 'kallias' continued for some time longer to occupy schiller's mind, but a fresh attack of illness intervened, and when he was again able to work he turned his mind to an essay upon 'winsomeness and dignity' (_anmut und würde_). it was written in may and june, 1793, and printed soon afterwards in the _new thalia_. in this essay we can observe a growing independence of thought and an amazing gift for the analysis of subtle impressions. in the main it is lucid enough, especially when one calls in the aid of the preceding letters to körner; but portions are hard reading. to give the gist of it in a few words is next to impossible, because it is so largely taken up with superfine distinctions in the meaning of words for which our language has at best but rough equivalents. it will be recalled that kant had denied pure beauty to the human form, on the ground that the human form expresses the moral dignity of human nature, which is an idea of the reason. schiller was piqued by this dictum to test _his_ theory of beauty on the human form. he begins, in a manner fitted to make old homer smile, with a rationalizing account of the girdle of venus,--the girdle which venus lends to juno when the latter wishes to excite the amorous desire of jove. venus, we are told, is pure beauty as it comes from the hand of nature. her girdle makes her 'winsome'. so winsomeness is something distinct from beauty; something transferable, movable. it is then further defined as beauty of motion; as the special prerogative of man; as the element of beauty which is not given by nature but is produced by the object. the essay then goes on to make a distinction between architectonic and technical beauty. the former is defined as a beautiful presentation of the aims of nature, the latter as referring to the aims themselves. the aesthetic faculty is concerned with architectonic beauty. in contemplation of an object it isolates the appearance and is affected by that alone, irrespective of any ideas of purpose or adaptation. at the same time the reason imputes freedom to the object, and when the object is a human form, this imputed freedom, whereby the object seems to assert its own autonomous personality, this which is superadded to the beauty that nature creates by the law-governed adaptation of means to ends, is winsomeness.--all of which seems to mean substantially this: that while pygmalion's statue was still ivory _it_ was beautiful; but when it became a woman with winsome ways _she_ was winsome. having demonstrated to his satisfaction that beauty is really compounded of two elements, first the sensuous pleasure caused by the play of personality, and secondly the rational gratification caused by the idea of adaptation to an end, schiller takes up the questions of moral beauty and of the ideal of character. he deprecates kant's strenuous insistence upon the categorical imperative of duty. a man, he urges, must be free; and the slavery of duty is no better than any other slavery. virtue is inclination to duty, and the ideal is to be found in the perfect equipoise of the sensuous and the rational nature; in other words, when 'thou shalt' and 'i would' pull steadily and harmoniously in the same direction. so he defines 'dignity' (_würde_) as the expression of a lofty mind, just as winsomeness is the expression of a beautiful soul. control of impulses by moral strength is intellectual freedom, and dignity is the visible expression of this freedom. dignity is manifested rather in suffering ([greek: pathos]), winsomeness in behavior ([greek: ethos]). each acts as a check upon the other. we demand that virtue be winsome and that inclination be dignified, and where winsomeness and dignity are present in harmonious equipoise in the same person, there the expression of humanity is complete. in the essay just spoken of reference is made more than once to a contemplated 'analytic of the beautiful', which was to clear up this and that. instead of attempting a treatise, however, schiller chose to go on settling his account with kant through the medium of contributions to the _new thalia_. those published immediately (1793-4) were the essay 'on the sublime', which included a special chapter 'on the pathetic'; and 'scattered reflections on various aesthetic subjects'. two other papers of kindred import, dating from this period, were not published until 1801. these were: 'on the artistic use of the vulgar and the low', and a second disquisition 'on the sublime'. following kant schiller defines the sublime as the impression produced by an object which excites in man's sensuous nature a feeling of weakness and dependence, and at the same time in his rational nature a feeling of freedom and superiority. he objects, however, to the kantian nomenclature. for the two kinds of sublime which kant called the mathematical and the dynamic, he proposes the names of the theoretical and the practical; meaning by the former that which tends to overawe the mind, by the latter that which tends to overawe the feeling. then follows a long and juiceless _begriffszergliederung_, which may be passed over as containing little that is of importance for the understanding of schiller's individuality. at last he comes to the subject of tragic pathos, as the most important phase of the practical-sublime. here he lays down the dogma that the final aim of art is the representation of the supersensuous. the essence of tragic pathos is declared to be the representation of moral superiority under the stress of suffering. the hero's sufferings must seem to be real that he may obtain due credit for his moral triumph. in connection with this thought schiller takes occasion to deride the genteel sufferers of the french classic tragedy and to commend the greeks for their fidelity to nature. at the same time he utters his word of warning to those poets who think to gain their end merely by the spectacle of great suffering. the sensuous, he insists, has in itself no aesthetic value; it is the moral resistance that counts, and the suffering is needed only to show that there really was something to resist. the latter part of the essay is directed against those who would try the creations of the poet by the standards of the moral judgment. it is argued that the moral and the aesthetic spheres of interest are separate and distinct. the poet is concerned with the latter. what he needs for his purpose is the manifestation of strength; whether the strength is put forth to a good or an evil purpose is, in itself, a matter of indifference. the poet cannot serve two masters. in all these discussions of the sublime and the pathetic, et cetera, schiller exhibits a pathetically sublime faith in the possibility of settling the questions at issue by the analytic method. he writes as if the human mind were composed of air-tight compartments, wherein the various operations of reason, understanding, taste, feeling and what not, are carried on under immutable laws growing out of the nature of man. his philosophy is also dualistic. he regards 'man' as consisting of two parts joined like the siamese twins. the one part, sensuous man, which is like unto the animals, is a part of 'nature'; the other part, the rational man, which is dowered with the birth-right of 'freedom', is outside of nature and above it. the untenableness of this conception has become since schiller's time increasingly evident. moreover, we have learned to look upon all things under the aspect of development and to know that man's reason, like the rest of him, is very much the creature of time and place. this being so, one finds it difficult, nowadays, to read the philosophic lucubrations of schiller with that patience which their well-meant seriousness really deserves. indeed he himself seems to have felt all along that there was some danger of his being carried too far away into the region of barren speculation; wherefore it was necessary, as he thought, not only to present his ideas in a popular form, but also to prove their relevancy to the practical concerns of human life. it was with this thought in mind that he finally began, instead of the 'kallias', a series of letters to his benefactor, the prince of augustenburg. in a long letter of july 13, 1793, he explained his point of view. the political dream of the century, he declared, that is, the dream of recreating society upon a foundation of pure reason, had come to naught. 'man' had shown himself unfit for freedom. his chains removed, he stood revealed as a barbarian and a slave,--the slave of unruly passion. and this notwithstanding all that the century had done for the enlightenment of his mind! evidently the need of the hour and of the future was not so much enlightenment of the mind as discipline of the feelings. in a number of subsequent letters, admirable in style and spirit, schiller set forth his theory of aesthetic education and his vision of the great good to be accomplished by it in the redemption of mankind from the dominion of the grosser passions. objections were duly considered, especially the discouraging fact that, historically, aesthetic refinement has too often coincided with supineness of character and moral degeneracy. this consideration made it an important part of the problem to show how the dangers of aesthetic culture could best be counteracted. the letters to the danish prince formed the basis of the 'letters on aesthetic education', which were published in 1795 in the _horen_, and constitute the ripest and most pleasing expression of schiller's aesthetic philosophy. in the first ten of the 'letters' he discusses the spirit of the age, for the purpose of showing that some sort of educational process is needed in order to fit mankind for the high calling of the freeman. the problem is to transform the state-ruled-by-force into a state-ruled-by-reason. to this end man must learn to resist and subdue the two inveterate enemies of his nobility, namely, the tyranny of sense which leads to savagery, and the inertness of mind which leads to barbarism, schiller defines the savage as a man whose feelings control his principles, the barbarian as a man whose principles destroy his feelings. at present, he declares, the mass of men still oscillate between savagery and barbarism, but the man _comme il faut_ must establish and preserve a perfect equipoise between his sensuous and his rational nature. whither shall he look for help? the state cannot aid him, for it treats him as if he had no reason; nor can philosophy save him through the mere cultivation of the reason, for it treats him as if he had no feelings. his only redeemer is the aesthetic sense, the love of beauty. the 'letters' then take up the desperate task of showing how the aesthetic sense can do this wonderful work. descending to the lowest nadir of abstraction,--schiller calls it rising to the highest heights,--he brings up two ultimate instincts or bents of mankind, to which he gives the appalling names of the 'thing-bent' and the 'form-bent' (_sachtrieb_ and _formtrieb_). the former impels to a change of status, the latter to the preservation of personality. the one is satisfied with what is mutable and finite, the other demands the immutable and the rational. to harmonize these two instincts, to take care that neither gets the better of the other or invades the other's territory, is the problem of culture. for a driver of the ill-matched team schiller calls in the _spieltrieb_, or play-bent, which is only a new name for the aesthetic faculty. his idea is that in the moment of aesthetic contemplation the sensuous and the rational instinct both find their account. in the act of escaping from the serious pull of thought and feeling to a mental state which satisfies both without succumbing completely to either, he finds an analogy to the act of playing. at the same time he is careful to point out that this kind of play is different from the sports of common life. as he uses the word, it means surrender to the illusion of art. play is thus the symbol of the highest self-realization. only in playing is man completely man. the last ten letters are devoted to what schiller, following kant, calls 'melting beauty' (_schmelzende _schönheit_), which is opposed to 'energizing beauty' (_energische schönheit_). the former is the natural corrective to the emotional excess which leads to savagery, while the latter (the sublime, the stirring,) is the antidote to the mental inertness which leads to barbarism. it is admitted that the aesthetic state is perfectly neutral so far as concerns the influencing of the will. a good work of art should leave us in a state of lofty serenity and freedom of mind. if we find ourselves influenced to a particular course of action, that is a sure sign that the art was bad. nevertheless,--and here lies the kernel of the whole discussion, so far as it bears upon education,--the aesthetic state is a necessary stage in the restoration of imperilled freedom. it is valuable morally simply because it _is_ neutral ground. when a man is under the too exclusive domination of either principles or feelings, he is in danger of becoming a slave, and needs to be pulled back to the neutral belt of freedom, in order that he may start afresh. 'in a word', says schiller, 'there is no other way of making the sensuous man rational except by first making him aesthetic.' finally the 'letters' take up the evolution of man from the state of savagery and attempt to show argumentatively and in detail how his progress has been determined by the development of his aesthetic sense. such are the 'letters on aesthetic education', which schiller regarded, in the year 1795, as a tract for the times. years agone he had made karl moor talk of poisoning the ocean; now he himself was thinking to sweeten a poisoned ocean with a bottle of aesthetic syrup. we see that the gist of the whole matter is simply this: that sanity and refinement are pressing needs; that good art makes for these things and in so doing makes indirectly for progress in right living and right thinking. this looks like a painfully small result to have been reached by such long and laborious logic-chopping; so that one is reminded of carlyle's cynical observation that the end and aim of the kantian philosophy "seem not to make abstruse things simple, but to make simple things abstruse". it is to be remarked, however, that the real value of the 'letters' is not to be found in the logic-chopping, for which their author apologizes again and again; not in the "dreadful array of first principles, the forest huge of terminology and definitions, where the panting intellect of weaker men wanders as in pathless thickets and at length sinks powerless to the earth, oppressed with fatigue and suffocated with scholastic miasma",[97]--but in the incidental flashes of luminous and suggestive comment. having himself conquered the kantian dialect and learned to write it, schiller had little patience with those who supposed that philosophic truth could and should be set forth in the easy manner of a fireside yarn. it was to free his mind on this subject that he published, in one of the early numbers of the _horen_, an essay 'on the necessary limits of the beautiful'. here the burden of his thought is that the philosopher, aiming at truth, must not yield to the seduction of trying to write beautifully. his concern is with fact and logic; imagination and feeling have no place in his domain. the lure of beauty may relax the mind and endanger truth, just as it may relax the will and endanger morality. this last thought contained the germ of his further essays, 'on the dangers of aesthetic culture' and 'on the moral benefit of aesthetic culture'. these, however, are only an amplification of ideas contained in the 'letters'. there remain for consideration, to complete our survey of schiller's philosophical writings, his short essay on matthison's poems and his long disquisition upon 'naive and sentimental poetry'. in the review he discusses the subject of landscape poetry, thus touching upon a question that had occupied lessing in the 'laokoön'. but instead of arguing like lessing that detailed description of objects is necessarily out of place in poetry, schiller defends it as capable in a high degree of giving pleasure. the poetic effectiveness of a description he finds to consist, first, in the truthfulness of the description; secondly, in its power, analogous to that of music, to excite vague emotion; and finally, in its power to awaken ideas by the law of association. he distinguishes between 'true' nature and 'actual' nature. we arrive at true nature when we take away from actual nature whatever is accidental, peculiar or unnecessary. this process is precisely what is described in one of the 'kallias' letters as 'idealization'. to idealize an object is, then, in schiller's vocabulary, not to beautify it, or to make it in any way other than it is, but to portray the 'idea' of it, that is, its essential truth, apart from all that is accidental or individual. he lays down the general rule that poetry is only concerned with true (or ideal) nature in this sense; never with actual (or historical) nature. 'every individual man', he declares, 'is by just so much less a man as he is an individual; every mode of feeling is by just so much less necessary and purely human as it is peculiar to a particular person. the grand style consists in the rejection of all that is accidental and the pure expression of the necessary.' of the essay upon 'naïve and sentimental poetry', contributed to the _horen_ in 1795, the first part is devoted to the 'naïve', which is defined as nature in felt contrast with art. to be naïve an action must not only be natural but must put us to shame by suggesting a contrast with our own sophisticated standards. from this it follows that our pleasure in the naïve, being connected with an idea of the reason, is not purely aesthetic, but partly moral. the _naïveté_ of children appeals to us because they are what we were and what we should again become. they represent an ideal, a theophany. though we may look down upon the childish, we can only look up to the childlike. a naïve action always implies a triumph of nature over art: if it is unintentional (naïve of surprise) we are amused; if deliberate (naïve of character) we are touched. genius is always naïve. both in its works and in social intercourse, it manifests the simplicity and directness of nature. it is modest because nature is modest; but cares nothing for decency, for decency is the offspring of corruption. it is sensible, but not shrewd. it expresses its loftiest and deepest thoughts with naive grace: they are divine oracles from the mouth of a child. these thoughts duly expounded, the essay goes on to consider the modern man's feeling for nature. this results, according to schiller, from our imputing _naïveté_ to the non-rational world. we are conscious of having wandered away from the state of innocence, happiness and perfection. 'nature' represents this state to our imaginations; it is the voice of the mother calling us back home, or whispering to us of boundless happiness and perfection. poetry which expresses this boundless longing for the ideal is 'sentimental', while that which reflects nature herself, in some definite part or phase, is 'naïve'. the naïve poet _is_ nature; the sentimental poet seeks a lost nature. the greeks are prevailingly naïve, the moderns prevailingly sentimental, but neither in any exclusive sense. the words are to be understood as expressing only a mode of feeling. the same poet, the same poem, may be naïve at one moment and sentimental at another. all sentimental poetry, then, is concerned with the disparity or contrast between reality and the ideal. if the poet is mainly interested in the real, we have, in the broad sense, satire, which may be pathetic or humorous. if he dwells more upon the ideal, we have elegiac poetry--elegiac in the narrower sense, if the ideal is conceived as a distant object of longing, idyllic if it is portrayed as a present reality. the second part of the essay is devoted to a review of the sentimental poets of modern germany. in the third part the naïve and sentimental poets are contrasted. the former, schiller contends, is concerned with the definite, the latter with the infinite. from the realist we turn easily and with pleasure to actual life; the idealist puts us for the moment out of humor with it. the one follows the laws of nature, the other those of reason. the one asks what a thing is good for, the other whether it is good. withal, however, schiller is careful to insist that even the naïve poet, the realist, is properly concerned only with true nature, and not with actual nature. everything that is,--for example, a violent outbreak of passion,--is actual nature; but this is not true human nature, because that implies free self-determination. true human nature can never be anything but noble. 'what disgusting absurdities', exclaims schiller,--and the words might well be taken to heart by some of our modern naturalists--'have resulted both in criticism and in practice from this confusion of true with actual nature! what trivialities are permitted, yea even praised, because unfortunately they are actual nature!' it is a part of schiller's theory that the true realist and the sane idealist must finally come together on common ground. footnotes: [footnote 92: eckermanns "gespräche", under date of november 14, 1823.] [footnote 93: he also admitted that he himself had profited from the study of kant; cf. eckermann, under date of april 11, 1827.] [footnote 94: schiller's aesthetic writings, and especially his relation to kant, have been much discussed in recent years. for a list of the more important works consult the appendix.] [footnote 95: an oft-repeated assertion to the contrary, which goes back to karoline von wolzogen, "schillers leben", achter abschnitt, is contradicted by a letter of schiller to goethe, written may 5, 1797.] [footnote 96: they are reprinted in sämmtliche schriften. x, 41 ff.] [footnote 97: carlyle's "life of schiller", page 137 (edition of 1845).] chapter xiv the great duumvirate nun kann ich aber hoffen, dasz wir, so viel von dem wege noch übrig sein mag, in gemeinschaft durchwandeln werden, und mit um so gröszerem gewinn, da die letzten gefährten auf einer langen reise sich immer am meisten zu sagen haben. _letter of 1794_. the coupled names of goethe and schiller denote a literary epoch as well as a peculiarly inspiring personal friendship. what a vista opens before the mind's eye when one thinks of all the influence that went out from them into the wide world during the nineteenth century! the visitor to weimar who goes to look at rietschel's famous statue in front of the theater has a sensation like that of standing at the source of a mighty river. of course the men and their time have been greatly idealized; like the sculptor, the imagination of posterity has lifted them above the level of the earth, joined their hands and given them the pose of far-seeing literary heroes. we think of each as increased by the whole strength of the other. as herman grimm puts it algebraically, the formula is not g + s, but g(+ s) + s(+ g).[98] and all this hits an essential truth, albeit the student of the documents--the letters and journals of the duumvirs, and of their friends and enemies--has great difficulty at times to imagine himself in an atmosphere of heroism. no nation, no public life of any account; a complete lack of interest, apparently, in many matters that now bulk very large in the minds of men; a small theater, equal to none but very modest demands; a few engravings and plaster-casts and paintings--many of them very poor--to serve as a basis for theories of art; a little optical apparatus, a few minerals and plants and bones, to aid in the advancement of science; everything material on a small scale,--this was weimar a hundred years ago. truly a restricted outlook upon this spacious world as it appears to us to-day! and then the duumvirs had their struggle with the infinitely little, and they fussed over this and that. this is especially true of goethe. his journals produce upon the reader now and then not so much an impression of glorious many-sidedness as of precious time wasted in futile puttering. but who shall dare to say that it was so in reality? the genius of life tells every great man what he can do, and it is for posterity to accept him and understand him as he was, without complaint and without sophistication. what goethe and schiller did in the midst of all their other doings, was to set their stamp upon the culture of their time; to create a new ideal of letters and of life, and to enrich their country's literature with a number of masterpieces which have since furnished food and inspiration to countless myriads. this is quite enough to justify a perennial curiosity concerning the details of their alliance. for six years the two men, though living as neighbors with many friends and many interests in common, had steadily held each other aloof. that they did so was goethe's fault, at least in the beginning. we may be very sure that a friendly advance from him would have melted schiller's animosity as the sun melts april snow. but he did not say the word. he looked upon schiller as the spokesman of a new and perverse generation that knew not joseph; and so he went his own way, serenely indifferent to the personality of the man whose talent he had recognized by helping him to a jena professorship. he paid some attention, it is true, to schiller's philosophic writings, but what he read did not altogether please him. when the essay upon 'winsomeness and dignity' came out, it seemed to him that schiller, in his enthusiasm for freedom and self-determination, was inclined to lord it all too proudly over mother nature. goethe was no less interested in 'ideas' than schiller, but he had not the same fondness for abstract reasoning from mental premises. his starting-point was always the external fact, and he regarded ideas as possessing a sort of objective reality. his homage was paid to nature and the five senses; schiller's to the deductive reason. nevertheless, the whole trend of schiller's aesthetic speculations brought him steadily nearer to goethe's way of thinking. his intense hellenism; his insistence upon the immense importance of art as an element of culture; his fervid championship of art for art's sake; his practical identification of the ideal with the typical; his doctrine of genius in its relation to abstract dogma, and above all his great earnestness, as of one striving with all his powers towards the better light,--this and much more could not fail to meet goethe's approval. and then came the great project of the _horen_, which was to unite all the best writers of germany in a common effort for the advancement of letters and the elevation of the public taste. this was an opportunity not to be despised, for goethe was at last beginning to be weary of his isolation at weimar. although at heart very desirous of exerting a large influence, he had well-nigh lost touch with the literary public. for four years he had done nothing worthy of his great name. people took little interest in his scientific studies, his 'grosz-cophta', and his 'citizen-general'. he felt the need of rehabilitating himself. so when he received schiller's polite invitation anent the _horen_, he accepted with alacrity; declaring himself ready not only to contribute, but to serve on the editorial committee. and a few days later,--it was on june 28, 1794, before he had seen schiller or exchanged further letters with him,--he wrote to charlotte von kalb that 'since the new epoch schiller too was becoming more friendly and trustful towards us weimarians'; whereat he rejoiced, 'hoping for much good from intercourse with him'. so we see that, as the matter then lay in goethe's mind, it was schiller who was the distant and distrustful party. thus the way was all prepared for the 'happy event', as goethe called it in an oft-quoted bit of reminiscence published many years later. it chanced that he and schiller were both present at a meeting of naturalists in jena. as they left the room together schiller let fall a remark to the effect that such piecemeal treatment of nature as they had been listening to was dull business for the layman. goethe replied that there were experts who could not approve it either. then he proceeded to explain his own views. they reached schiller's house in earnest conversation, and goethe went in to continue his demonstration with the aid of a drawing--probably of a typical plant. schiller listened with seeming comprehension and then shook his head, saying: 'but that is not an experience; that is an idea.' goethe was disappointed, perplexed. all his labor had gone for naught, and the awful chasm was still yawning. he replied that he was glad if he had ideas without knowing it and could actually see them with his eyes, schiller defended himself suavely as a good kantian, and the men separated, each in a docile mood with respect to the other. herman grimm will have it that schiller now entered upon a crafty campaign for the conquest of goethe; and really the facts give some color to such a view, albeit, as we have seen, the battle was more than half won before a shot was fired. schiller had his magazine very much at heart, and besides that he had always been a very sincere and ungrudging admirer of goethe's poetic genius. very likely he looked upon him as a weakling in philosophy. to talk of seeing ideas with the bodily eye! evidently there was no profit in bombarding such a man with syllogisms. but it might be useful to show that one understood him. so schiller sat him down and wrote out, in the form of a letter, a little essay upon goethe's individuality, attributing to him a wonderful intuition whereby he saw in advance all that philosophy could prove: minds of your sort seldom know how far they have advanced, and how little reason they have to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from them.... for a long time, though at a considerable distance, i have been watching the course of your mind and noticing with ever-renewed admiration the way that you have marked out for yourself. you seek the necessary in nature, but by the very hardest path,--a path which weaker minds would take good care not to attempt. you take all nature together, in order to get light upon the particular. in the totality of her manifestations you hope to find the rationale of the individual.... had you been born a greek or even an italian, and thus surrounded from infancy with exquisite scenery and idealizing art, your way would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps rendered unnecessary.... as it was, having been born a german, you had to refashion the old inferior nature that was thrust upon your imagination, after the better pattern which your imagination had created; and this could only be done by means of leading principles. but this logical direction which the reflecting mind is compelled to take does not tally well with the aesthetic direction of the creating mind. so you had another task; just as you passed previously from intuition to abstraction, you had now to convert concepts back into intuitions, and thoughts into feelings; for only through these can genius create. for goethe, whose nature really craved friendship hardly less than schiller's, there was something very grateful in this frank homage combined with rare perspicacity. he saw that schiller understood him or was at least concerned to understand him. with all their differences they were spiritual congeners, and much might be hoped for from this new connection. so he sent a very cordial reply to the man who had thus 'with friendly hand struck the balance of his existence'; averring that he too dated a new epoch from their meeting in jena; expressing the hope that they might soon find opportunity for a further interchange of views and that, having mutually cleared up their past course of thinking, they might proceed on their way together. a few weeks later schiller spent two weeks as goethe's guest in weimar, where long discussions, spun out on one occasion from noon to midnight, begot a perfect understanding and laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship. it was a friendship based upon mutual respect and mutual need, full of high advantage on both sides and cherished loyally to the end. between then and now many and many a writer has compared goethe with schiller and undertaken to reckon up the balance of their respective merit. the task is not easy, even though the world is now well agreed that goethe's was the rarer genius. no doubt he, much more than schiller, was destined to be a bringer of light to the coming century; but the immense prestige of his name is due partly to the happy fate that gave him a long life and invested his old age with the glamour of literary kingship. if we compare the actual production of the two men during the eleven years of their association, it is not at all clear that the palm should be given to goethe. the five plays of schiller, with the 'song of the bell', and the best of his shorter poems, will bear comparison very well, in the aggregate, with 'wilhelm meister', 'hermann and dorothea', the 'natural daughter' and those portions of 'faust' which were written at this time. unquestionably goethe at his best was a far greater poet than schiller; but he was less steadily at his best, and his artistic conscience was more lax than schiller's. he envisaged life more largely and more truly, and he wrote with his eye upon the object. his nature inclined to placid contemplation; he was no orator, though something of a preacher. he did not care so much to stir the depths of feeling as to inform and liberalize. in his imaginative work he let himself go _mit holdem irren_ and preferred to avoid artificial surprises and stagy contrasts. wherefore his work is the more illuminative, the more suggestive,--he is the poet of the literary class. schiller, on the other hand, was an orator who never lost sight of the effect he wished to produce. he worked more intensely, more methodically, and was less dependent upon mood. he is thus the poet of those who care less for delicacy of workmanship than for sonorous diction, elevated sentiment and telling effects. there is room in the world for both kinds of endowment. it is quite probable that goethe and schiller would sooner or later have come together in a friendly relation even if the _horen_ had never been thought of; and in that case their friendship would have lacked the militant tinge that it presently took on. it was the magazine that leagued them together as allies against the forces of philistia and made thuringia the storm-center of a new literary movement. but for this it would probably never have occurred to any one to dub them 'the dioscuri'. prior to the appearance of the first number, in january, 1795, the new journal had been well advertised. cotta was prepared to spend money on it freely; the contributors were to be handsomely paid, and twenty-five of the best known writers in germany had promised their cooperation. there was every reason to hope for a dashing success; and to make assurance doubly sure schiller arranged for 'cooked' reviews of the _horen_ to be paid for by its publisher. but when the time came to launch his enterprise the hopeful editor found himself left very much in the lurch. 'lord help me, or i perish' he wrote ruefully to körner, on december 29; 'goethe does not wish to print his 'elegies' in the first number, herder also prefers to wait, fichte is busy with his lectures, garve is sick, engel lazy and the others do not answer.' and so it came about that the first number of the _horen_ was largely made up of rather abstruse reading. schiller did not fully realize that the philosophy on which he had been feeding with satisfaction for three years was not a palatable diet for the general literary public. he regarded his own 'letters on aesthetic education' as a model of lucid popular exposition,--as indeed they are in comparison with kant. but the number was further freighted with a deep-diving article by fichte, while goethe's poetic 'epistle' in hexameters, and the beginning of his 'conversations of german emigrés ', though in a lighter vein, were not of thrilling interest to seekers after entertainment. the public, which had expected something different, was disappointed; and when succeeding numbers brought further brain-racking profundities, there was a large ebullition of disgust. cotta began to write of complaints and cancelled subscriptions; and ere long it looked as if the _horen_ would prove a big fiasco. schiller, who should have been inured by this time to the consequences of editorial misjudgment, was disgruntled, vexed. he began to feel that the german public was an indolent, long-eared beast that needed the education of the scourge rather than of aesthetic letters. he made some effort, it is true, to enliven his columns with more entertaining matter, but the abstruse, in prose and verse, continued to preponderate. by autumn he was minded to give up the whole undertaking, but was persuaded by cotta to go on. meanwhile he had begun to grow weary of theorizing and to feel the homesickness of the poet. 'wilhelm meister', as it began to issue from the press, excited his unbounded enthusiasm. 'i cannot tell you', he wrote to his new friend, i cannot tell you how painful it is to me oftentimes to turn from a work of this character to philosophy. there everything is so bright, so living, so harmonious and humanly true; here everything is so strict, so rigid, so very unnatural.... this much is certain: the poet is the only true human being, and the best philosopher is only a caricature beside him. so, in the summer of 1795, he began once more to poetize,--'not venturing out upon the high sea of invention', as he expressed it, 'but keeping close to the shore of philosophy'. in other words he wrote a number of philosophic poems, partly for the _horen_ and partly for the new poetic 'almanac' that he had undertaken to edit, in addition to the _horen_. this return to poetry was a joy to him, notwithstanding the ill health which confined him to the house and cut him off from the exhilarations of the external world. it must never be forgotten that those philosophic poems are the effusions of a lonely thinker who was compelled to draw his inspiration from within, and was not entirely unaware of the fetters he had forged for himself by his long addiction to philosophy. there was, however, one more subject, of literary as well as philosophic interest, which he was minded to treat before turning his back finally upon the arid wastes of theory;--the subject of realism versus idealism, or, as he decided to phrase it, of naïve and sentimental poetry. this essay, published in 1796, was briefly analyzed in the last chapter. it marks the end of schiller's one-sided glorification of the greeks. in more than one passage he comes to the rescue of the modern poet--the sentimentalist--as the poet of the infinite, of the ideal. his contention is that while the realist may be the more admirable in a limited sphere, the idealist has a larger sphere, and his perfection is a higher thing. this attempt of schiller's to describe, in a scientific spirit, the different kinds of artistic endowment, and to do full justice to all, grew naturally out of his intercourse with goethe. he admired goethe more and more. the fifth book of 'meister' produced in him a 'veritable intoxication'; yet its quality was strikingly unlike that of 'werther' or 'iphigenie', and totally different from anything that he himself had done or could possibly do. perhaps he may have been further influenced by a.w. schlegel's sympathetic papers upon dante, which had been published in the _horen_ and which revealed to him a new poetic genius of the highest order, yet not at all homeric. so he wrote his famous disquisition,--next to lessing's 'laokoön' the most thoughtful and the most influential piece of criticism produced anywhere in the eighteenth century,--and endeavored to make it as readable as possible. goethe, who read the manuscript in november, 1795, wrote of it thus: since this theory treats me so well, nothing is more natural than that i should approve its principles and that its conclusions should seem to me correct. i should be more distrustful, however, if i had not at first found myself in an attitude of opposition to your views; for it is not unknown to you that, from an excessive predilection for the ancient poets, i have often been unjust to the modern. according to your doctrine i can now be at one with myself, since i no longer need to contemn that which, under certain conditions, an irresistible impulse compelled me to produce; and it is a very pleasant feeling to be not altogether dissatisfied with one's self and one's contemporaries. thus the two men were drawn closer together in mutual sympathy and appreciation, and found in each other more and more a bulwark against the whips and scorns of hostile criticism. of such criticism there was no lack. the _horen_ was making enemies rapidly and had become, as schiller put it, a veritable _ecclesia militans_. one jakob in halle made an assault upon schiller's aesthetic writings. dull old nicolai in berlin complained of the ravages of kantism in german literature. pious souls like stolberg were scandalized by the lubricity of goethe's 'elegies' and 'wilhelm meister'. the famous philologist, wolf, pounced violently upon one of herder's homeric essays. schiller had now fallen out with his old friend göschen, who was a center of contemptuous opposition at leipzig. and goethe, too, had his quarrel with the world: he felt absurdly sore over the neglect by scientific men of his optical theories in opposition to newton. friendly voices were scarcely heard anywhere. there was little opportunity for indulging that pleasant emotion of 'being satisfied with one's contemporaries'. and so it came to pass that the two friends waxed wroth and determined to strike back. at first they thought of a withering review in the _horen_, but this idea was given up in favor of another. goethe had taken a great fancy to the ancient elegiac meter and for some time past it had been his favorite form of poetic expression. schiller, originally a hater of the hexameter, had caught the fever from goethe, and used the elegiac form in a number of poems. in december, 1795, goethe suggested that they amuse themselves by making epigrams, in the style of martial's 'xenia', upon the various journals against which they had a grudge, devoting a distich to each. his plan was that each should make a large number; then they would compare, select the best and publish them in the second volume of the 'almanac'. schiller was captivated by the idea, and 'xenia' now became the order of the day. it was soon decided not to restrict them to the offensive journals, but to take a shot wherever there was a mark. both conspirators took great delight in the proposed _teufelei_,--it would be such sport to stir up the vermin and hear them buzz. they gave the milder 'xenia' pet names such as 'jovial brethren', 'little fellows', 'teasing youngsters', while the harsher ones were likened to stinging insects, or to the foxes of samson: you with the blazing tails, away to philistia, foxes! spoil the flourishing crops, crops of paper and ink. as goethe was still preoccupied with 'wilhelm meister', it happened at first that schiller was the more active in the production of these 'kitchen presents', especially such as had pepper in them. with the lapse of time goethe's share increased. the two were frequently together, for days or weeks at a time, and the mass of xenia grew rapidly. they determined to swell the number to a thousand and to give the collection a sort of artistic completeness; to make it, that is, a sort of general confession of faith. they agreed furthermore that they would publish the epigrams as a joint production and treat their separate authorship as an inviolable secret. as a matter of fact, some of them really were joint productions. one would suggest the idea or the title, and the other write the verses; or one write the hexameter and the other the pentameter. during the first half of 1796 schiller wrote little else than xenia. by the arrival of summer the joint output amounted to nearly a thousand, but less than half that number found their way into the famous 'xenia almanac' of 1797. of these the targets were legion and the merit various. some few of them were very good, others little short of atrocious, particularly in the matter of form. as for the general mass, their piquancy is not so great as to superinduce in the reader of to-day a dangerously violent cachinnation. neither goethe nor schiller can be credited with a large vein of sparkling wit. some of the xenia are far-fetched and operose, while others sound rather vacuous. the form of the monodistich was in itself a safeguard against diffuseness, but not against the equal peril of inanity. it would be impossible here to do more than glance at the personalities involved in this rather inglorious squabble. many of the xenia were personal pin-pricks. thus several were directed against the musician reichardt, who, as editor of two journals, had shown strong sympathy with the revolution. goethe, the courtier, and schiller, who had no democratic proclivities, came to the defense of the gentry thus; aristocratical dogs will growl at beggars, but mark you how little democrat spitz soaps at the stockings of silk. and again: gentlemen, keep your seats! for the curs but covet your places, elegant places to hear all the other dogs bark. a whole broadside was aimed at the garrulous nicolai, who deserved a better fate. as the champion of lucidity and reasonableness he stood in reality for a very good cause,--no preachment more necessary in germany then or since. but in his old age he had fallen a prey to the _cacoethes scribendi;_ he insisted upon having his say about everything, yet his stock of ideas had long since run out. so he became the bogey of the weimar-jena people. the xenia assailed him with frank brutality, thus: what is beyond your reach is bad, you think in your blindness, yet whatever you touch, that you cover with dirt. other objects of attack were the brothers stolberg, for their narrow religiosity; friedrich schlegel, for his bumptious self-conceit; and various small fry for this and that peccadillo.[99] a large part of the epigrams, however, were of the 'tame' variety, that is, stingless outgivings of a jocund humor, or grave pronunciamentos upon religion, philosophy, art and so forth. the authors did not wish to appear before the world as mere executioners, but as men with a positive creed, comprising things to be loved as well as things to be hated. they pleaded for sanity, clearness and moderation, and frowned upon the fanatics, hypocrites, vulgarians and cranks. the well-known distich entitled 'my creed' is representative of many which were directed against the spirit of blind partisanship: which religion is mine? not one of the many you mention. 'why', do you venture to ask? too much religion, i say. even virtue was to be cherished temperately,--without too much talk about it: nothing so hateful as vice, and all the more to be hated, since because of it, now, virtue is really a need. and so on in endless variety, on all sorts of subjects. further illustration shall be dispensed with, seeing that the ancient distich is a poetic form for which the english language has, at the best, but little sympathy. in german it goes much better; and for schiller in particular, with his natural love of antithesis, it proved a convenient setting for his opinions. the effect of the xenia was to set literary germany agog with curiosity. two editions of the 'almanac' were quickly bought up and a third became necessary. there was infinite guessing, speculating, interpreting, and among those who had been hit there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, a very few friends of goethe and schiller, such as körner, humboldt and zelter, watched the commotion with solemn glee. others were shocked or grieved at such a mode of warfare. wieland mildly regretted that he had come off well in the xenia, seeing that many other honest people had fared so badly. herder was much more outspoken and declared that he hated the whole accursed species. the replies, protests and counter-attacks were legion, some in brutal belligerent prose, others in more or less clever anti-xenia. some of the latter were grossly abusive, and even indecent; a few contained very pretty home-thrusts, as when in allusion to a well-known poem of schiller's he was advised to trouble himself less about the 'dignity of women' and more about his own;[100] or where his 'realm of shades' was declared to be so very shadowy that one could not see the shades for the shadow.[101] but the best of all perhaps was the oft-quoted gem: in weimar and in jena they make hexameters like this, but the pentameters are even more excellent.[102] historians of german literature are probably right in believing that the xenia fusillade produced on the whole a salutary effect, although many of the objects of attack seem, at this date, to have been hardly worth the ammunition. but the explosion cleared the muggy air like a thunder-storm and denned many an issue that it was well to have defined. writers of every ilk were shaken out of their somnolence and compelled to look in the direction of weimar; and when it was a question of taking sides, where was the force that could hope to make headway against the combined strength of goethe and schiller? the odds were too great; there was nothing to do but to grumble a little and then--acquiesce in the new leadership. as for the dioscuri, they had the wisdom to see that one sharp campaign was enough; that for the rest they could further the good cause much more effectively by admirable creation than by peppery epigrams. prod a man for his bad taste or his foolish opinions, and you harden his heart and provoke him to retaliate; give him something to admire, and you make him a friend in spite of himself. in the autumn of 1796 schiller addressed himself to 'wallenstein', and from that time on dramatic poetry continued to be his chief concern. he led a quiet, laborious life, battling often with disease and depression, but sustained by high resolution and finding joy enough in domestic affection and the friendship of goethe. the _horen_ lasted three years and then died an easy death by the mutual consent of editor and publisher. of the 'almanac' five numbers appeared, beginning with 1796. in these small annual volumes a large part of schiller's best poems were originally published. his work upon the 'almanac' was usually done in the summer, other activities being then temporarily laid aside. from, the time of his connection with cotta, who took over the 'almanac' after the first number had appeared, schiller usually had money enough for his needs. but his needs were very modest, the demands of social life in jena--or even in weimar under the fiercer but still not very fierce light of the court--being extremely simple. he had not to reckon with the persian apparatus that disturbed the soul of horace. the further relations of goethe and schiller, so far as they have any important bearing upon the works of the latter, will be touched on in subsequent chapters. here let it be remarked in passing that their friendship was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a mere relation of master and disciple. it was rather a spiritual copartnership of equals, each recognizing the other's strength, respecting the other's individuality and eager to profit by discussion. in the beginning, it is true, schiller looked up to goethe as to a great and wise teacher who was to give everything and receive little or nothing in return. every one will recall his saying that he was a mere poetic scalawag in comparison with goethe. but it is worth remembering that this remark was made after the reading of 'wilhelm meister',--a work which, notwithstanding his admiration, he criticised very sharply. and the justice of his criticism was admitted by goethe; whereupon schiller drily observed in a letter to körner that goethe was a man who could be told a great deal of truth. as time passed, schiller dropped the tone of humble docility and became more and more independent. if he deferred to the superior wisdom of goethe in dealing with the plastic arts and natural science, there were other matters,--philosophy, poetic theory and the dramatic art,--upon which he felt that he could speak as one having authority. and his authority was respected by goethe, especially after the completion of 'wallenstein'. goethe saw that schiller, along with his poetic gift, possessed a practical dramatic talent,--an eye for effect and a power of appealing to the general heart,--such as he, goethe, could by no means claim for himself. and so the nominal director of the weimar theater leaned heavily upon his friend and looked to him as the best hope of the german drama. footnotes: [footnote 98: "goethe", einundzwanzigste vorlesung.] [footnote 99: all the extant xenia, nine hundred and twenty-six in number,--many of them previously unknown,--were published in 1893 by erich schmidt and bernhard suphan, with copious introduction and notes, as volume 8 of the "schriften der goethe-gesellschaft" in weimar.] [footnote 100: lasz doch die frauen in ruhe mit ihrer würde, und sorge für die deine, mein freund. ihre bewahren sie schon.] [footnote 101: nun, was denkt ihr vom reiche der schatten? es schattet und schattet dasz man vor schatten umher nichts von den schatten erkennt.] [footnote 102: in weimar und in jena macht man hexameter wie der; aber die pentameter sind doch noch excellenter.] chapter xv later poems so führt zu seiner jugend hütten, zu seiner unschuld reinem glück, vom fernen ausland fremder sitten den flüchtling der gesang zurück, in der natur getreuen armen von kalten regeln zu erwarmen. _'the power of song'_. the dominant note of schiller's later poetry is intellectual seriousness; wherefore, if there be those for whom intellectual seriousness is not a quality of poetry at all, for them he has not written. the element of reflection is nearly always prominent in his verse, though there are a few of his poems, notably his best ballads, in which it is conspicuously lacking. what we usually hear is the man of culture commenting upon life, and everywhere he makes his appeal to universal sentiments. the spontaneity, or seeming spontaneity, of the great lyrists was no part of his gift. to catch a fleeting fancy, or some eccentricity of private emotion, and fix it in musical verse of a vague suggestiveness, was not in his line. if he had ever, like heine, imagined himself joining his sweetheart in the grave and defying the resurrection in a rapturous embrace, he would probably have thought it beneath his dignity to versify the whimsy. of course his verse is self-revelation, without which poetry cannot be; but it is the revelation of a soul dwelling habitually in the upper altitudes of thought and emotion, and always assuming that fellow-mortals who care for poetry at all will be capable of a serious joy in the things of the mind. one may say that his art as a poet consists not so much in the direct expression of feeling in sensuous and passionate language, as in the transfiguration of thought by means of impassioned imagery. in his poems as elsewhere he is a good deal of a rhetorician, but he is never insincere. his verse came from the heart, only it was the expression of character and convictions rather than of moods and fancies. it seems intended to edify rather than to portray; to impress rather than to delight. some of it, too, is occupied with ideal sentiments so abstract and sublimated as to possess but languid interest for normally constituted lovers of poetry. for a while, at least, after his return to poetry, he may fairly be said to have cared a little too much for the white radiance of eternity, and not quite enough for the colored reflection beneath the dome.[103] this last observation has in view more particularly the poems he wrote in the year 1795, while still 'hugging the shore of philosophy'. take for example 'the veiled image at sais', which tells in rather prosaic pentameters of an ardent young truth-seeker who is escorted by an egyptian hierophant to a veiled statue and told that whoso lifts the veil shall see the truth. at the same time he is warned that the veil must not be lifted save by the consecrated hand of the priest himself. moved by a curiosity which can hardly seem anything but laudable,--unless one is prepared to take the side of the sacerdotal humbug,--the young man returns in the night and raises the veil. in the morning he is found pale and unconscious at the foot of the statue. soon afterwards he dies; leaving to mankind the message: woe unto him who seeks the truth through guilt. this has an unctuous sound, and one gets a vague impression that the old story has been dressed up for the sake of some modern application. one is piqued to reflect upon it; but the more one reflects the more clearly one sees that there is no real instruction in it. but if there is no instruction, there is nothing at all; since the mysticism is of a kind that appeals solely to the intellect. far more interesting is the poem which was at first called 'the realm of shades' and later 'the ideal and life',--a difficult production, which resembles 'the artists' in its suggestion of a voyage through the imponderable ether. we begin with the blessed gods in olympus and end with the apotheosis of hercules; and the intervening stretch is like the vasty realm of the mothers in 'faust'. the poem is intellectual, in the sense that its theme is a concept of the mind, and its structure logical throughout; yet every strophe is surcharged with feeling, and the diction presents a marvelous wealth of imagery. it must be conquered by study before it can yield any great pleasure; but the conquest once made, one finds a noble delight in the gorgeous coloring with which schiller invests his idealistic rainbow in the clouds. good critics, favorable to schiller's genius, regard 'the ideal and life' as the greatest of his philosophic poems and the most characteristic expression of his nature. he himself felt a sort of reverence for it. 'when you receive this letter', he wrote to humboldt, 'put away everything that is profane and read this poem in solemn quiet.' and humboldt replied: 'how shall i thank you for the indescribable pleasure that your poem has given me? since the day on which i received it, it has in the truest sense possessed me; i have read nothing else, have scarcely thought of anything else.' the general drift of the wonderfully pregnant verses is that man attains peace only by renouncing the things of sense and living in the realm of shades, that is, among eternal ideals. here he is free--like the gods. the weavers of the web--the fates--but sway the matter and the things of clay; safe from each change that time to matter gives, nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray with gods a god, amidst the fields of day, the form, the archetype, serenely lives. wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing? cast from thee earth, the bitter and the real, high from this cramped and dungeon being, spring into the realm of the ideal.[104] throughout the poem 'beauty' is put for 'the ideal'; and we get a reflex of the philosophic doctrine that only the aesthetic faculty can resolve the eternal conflict between the sensuous and the rational man. life is and must be struggle, that being its very essence; but by taking refuge in the realm of the ideal, man anticipates his apotheosis. there he escapes from the tyranny of the flesh and the bondage of nature's law. the misery of struggle and defeat no longer vexes him. the warring forces are reconciled and he sees their conflict under the aspect of eternal beauty. thus, like the new-born god, alcides, taking leave of the terrestrial battle-ground, he mounts into heaven, while the nightmare of the earthly life 'sinks and sinks and sinks'. behold him spring blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing, and the dull matter that confined before sinks downward, downward, downward, as a dream! olympian hymns receive the escaping soul, and smiling hebe, from the ambrosial stream, fills for a god the bowl.[105] all this may seem, at first blush, to attach excessive importance to the attainment of inward peace and harmony,--as if one's private comfort were the greatest thing in life. it _seems_ to recommend a quietistic, contemplative life; for how else shall one escape from the actual into the ideal? nevertheless it would be a great mistake to read into the poem anything like a recommendation of quietism. the ultimate goal is described in terms which suggest now the mythology of homer, now the platonic realm of ideals, and again the christian heaven; but however the blessed existence is imaged, it is always thought of as attainable only through a strenuous grapple with the realities of this life. thus the essential spirit of the poem is the spirit of energetic, hopeful endeavor. its doctrine is, to quote the words of kuno francke, that "only through work are we delivered from the slavery of the senses"; that "the very trials and sufferings of mankind bring out its divine nature and insure its ultimate transition to an existence of ideal harmony and beauty".[106] the doctrine, in its essence, was dear to goethe, as well as to schiller, and takes us into the holy-of-holies of their joint philosophy. what else did goethe mean by his oft-reiterated preachment of renunciation, and by his well-known verses about 'weaning oneself from the half and living resolutely in the whole, the good and the beautiful'? in his excellent book upon diderot mr. john morley speaks somewhere of "that affectation of culture with which the great goethe infected part of the world". let it not be forgotten, however, in our latter-day contempt of culture, that the weimar poets were great workers, and also, in their way, great fighters. they did not turn their attention--at least not directly--to the crushing of the infamous, nor to any battle against social or political wrong. they fought rather for sanity, for good art, for philosophy; for those things which go to enrich and broaden the life of the individual. it was a good fight,--the best which, at their time, with their gifts, they could possibly have engaged in. schiller's fervid verses, recommending an escape from the bondage of sense to the free realm of the mind, correspond of course to nothing that is humanly feasible. the shackles of the flesh are upon us and there is no way to get rid of them. it is only an ideal, a poet's dream. nevertheless the subject has a practical aspect which is definable in plain prose. it is found in the following passage from goethe: we put one passion in place of another; employments, dilettantisms, amusements, hobbies,--we try them all through to the end only to cry out at last that all is vanity. no one is horrified at this false, this blasphemous saying; indeed it is thought to be wise and irrefutable. but there are a few persons who, anticipating such intolerable feelings, in order to avoid all partial resignations, resign themselves universally once for all. such persons convince themselves with regard to the eternal, necessary, law-governed order of things, and seek to acquire ideas which are indestructible and are only confirmed by the contemplation of that which is transient.[107] other poems of the year 1795 were 'the partition of the earth', wherein zeus takes pity on the portionless poet by giving him a perpetual _entrée_ to the celestial court; the mildly humorous 'deeds of the philosopher', a bit of persiflage on the art of proving what everybody knows, and also several pieces in the elegiac form. of these last the weightiest is the one at first called simply 'elegy', and later 'the walk'. just as goethe had used the elegiac meter for his reminiscences of rome, so schiller employs it for his impressions of such small travel as fate permitted him,--a summertime walk in field or forest. the verses will bear comparison very well with the 'roman elegies'. instead of paintings, statues, marble palaces and the troublesome amor, we have the aspects of nature,--the music of bird and bee, and the toil of the husbandman 'not yet awakened to freedom'. as our sauntering poet comes in sight of a city,--the locus of the poem is the neighborhood of jena, with reminiscent and imaginative touches here and there,--he is moved to reflections upon the more eager life of the townspeople. this leads to a retrospective survey of the origins of civilization,--of agriculture, the mechanical crafts, trade, letters, art, science and the social sentiments. then the darker side of the picture is developed,--the evils, inhumanities, corruptions and vices of civilized life. for some time the wanderer pursues his way completely lost in these sad contemplations; then suddenly he returns to the present and finds himself alone with nature, from whose 'pure altar' he receives back again the joyousness of youth. thus the poem ends, like 'the ideal and life', upon an idyllic note; the one pointing forward, beyond the warfare of life, to an unimaginable elysium, the other pointing backward to a happy golden age of which mother nature is the living reminder: ever the will of man is changing the rule and the purpose, ever the genius of life alters the form of his deed. but in eternal youth, in ever varying beauty, thou, o mother of men, keepest the ancient law.... under the selfsame blue, over the same old green, wander together the near, and wander the far-away races, and old homer's sun, lo! it shines on us now. the inner form of 'the walk'--loving contemplation of nature, giving rise to general reflections upon life--is essentially goethean; one may safely regard it as a conscious experiment in goethe's manner. as such it is very good indeed, although its exotic meter has stood in the way of its attaining the popularity of the ballads and the 'song of the bell'. 'the walk' and 'the ideal and life' are the noblest gifts of schiller's didactic muse. coming now to the poems of the year 1796, and regarding them first in a general way as a group by themselves, we can observe that schiller has made progress in weaning himself from abstract modes of thought. the stanzas entitled 'the power of song' tell of a fugitive in strange lands lured back to warm himself in the embrace of nature from the chill of 'cold rules'. another reminds the metaphysician, who boasts of the great height to which he has climbed, that his altitude can do nothing for him except give him a view of the valley below, 'pegasus in harness' is a humorous apologue intended to enforce the truth that the winged horse is of no use for drudgery and exhibits his proper mettle only when ridden by a poet. of much greater interest than any of these is 'the ideals'. here the middle-aged poet recalls the fervid dreams of his youth and thinks of them under the image of airy sprites attending his rushing chariot, like the hours in guido's picture. midway in his course he finds that they have all dropped away, save friendship and work,--friendship that lovingly shares the burdens of life, and work that only brings grains of sand one by one to the builder, yet from the debt-book of the ages erases minutes, days and years. most noteworthy in this group, however, is unquestionably that famous tribute to womanhood which goes by the name of 'dignity of women'. looked at with the scientific eye it is sheer gyneolatry,--the chivalrous sentiment inflated with poetic wind, like a bubble, to the utmost possible degree of iridescent tenuity. man is depicted as a wild creature, ever tossing on the sea of passion, or chasing phantoms in the empyrean. reckless and vehement, he lives by the law of force, or, at the best, by the law of reason and logic. woman, on the other hand, follows the better light of feeling and gently lures the daring wanderer back to present realities. in her little sphere of intuition she is richer and freer than he in his boundless kingdom of thought and imagination. her sovereignty is that of a child or an angel, making always for peace, gentleness and goodness.--all of which is extremely interesting as a classical expression of an old-fashioned sentiment that good men used once to believe in. schiller believed in it ardently, and one loves him none the less for that. the most cogent objection to his verses is their generality. for 'man' it is necessary to read 'friedrich schiller', and for 'woman', his wife. in its metrical form the poem attempts to express the lovableness of the 'eternal-womanly' by means of a lightly flowing dactylic measure, while a heavier trochaic cadence is employed to denote the nature of man: ehret die frauen! sie flechten und weben himmlische rosen ins irdische leben, flechten der liebe beglückendes band.... ewig aus der wahrheit schranken schweift des mannes wilde kraft, und die irren tritte wanken auf dem meer der leidenschaft.[108] such a scheme, in the hands of a schiller, leads inevitably to a crescendo of rhetorical contrasts, which in the end sound somewhat flighty and forced. the poem was an object of ridicule to the romanticists, and the elder schlegel wrote a saucy parody of the first two strophes.[109] the few poems that found a place in the 'almanac' of 1797, along with the luxuriant crop of xenia, are relatively unimportant. the difference between the sexes, a subject which wilhelm von humboldt had discussed in the _horen_, was expounded anew by schiller in distichs. it is very much the same story as the 'dignity of women', the distich form lending itself beautifully to those antitheses which were schiller's delight. then there was a poetic riddle, called 'the maiden from afar',--a slight affair, but pretty in its way; a 'lament of ceres', in trochaic tetrameters, and a 'dithyramb', wherein a poet is visited by all the olympian gods and cheered with a draught of hebe's joy-giving nectar. these classicizing poems, which purport to express modern feeling in the terms of greek mythology, sound now a little hollow and conventional. the vein had been worked to excess even in schiller's day, and it is no wonder that the romanticists pined for something new. the best of them all is 'the eleusinian festival', called originally 'song of the citizen', in which schiller returns to his favorite theme--the origin and progress of civilized society. the climactic thought of the twenty-seven sonorous stanzas is contained in the kantian oracle of ceres: freiheit liebt das tier der wüste, frei im äther herrscht der gott, ihrer brust gewalt'ge lüste zähmet das naturgebot; doch der mensch, in ihrer mitte, soll sich an den menschen reihn, und allein durch seine sitte kann er frei und mächtig sein.[110] in the spring of the year 1797, as 'hermann and dorothea' was approaching completion, goethe and schiller were led to an interchange of views concerning the distinctive qualities of epic poetry. their discussion begot an interest in the kindred type of the ballad, which may be regarded as a miniature epic in a lyrical form. the result was that both poets began to make ballads for the next year's 'almanac'. schiller contributed five: 'the diver', 'the ring of polycrates', 'the cranes of ibycus', 'the errand at the furnace' and 'the knight of toggenburg'. in subsequent years he wrote three others: 'the pledge', 'hero and leander' and 'the count of hapsburg'. to these may be added 'the glove ', which was not called a ballad because not written in uniform stanzas, and 'the fight with the dragon ', which was called a 'romanza'. these poems, taken as a whole, owe nothing whatever to the folk-song. the popular ballad, which had once fascinated goethe and herder and bürger, and the göttingen poets generally, seems never to have appealed to schiller in any notable degree. if we except 'the count of hapsburg', his ballad themes are all exotic, that is, they do not deal with german legend or history or superstition. the suggestions came generally from out-of-the-way reading, and in one or two cases his exact source has not been certainly identified. the tales have no odor of the soil, no local color. they make no use of the supernatural, the gruesome or the uncanny. they are not wild roses, but jaqueminots cultivated with an aesthetic end in view. their aroma is distinctly literary, and they are all eminently serious. not a smile is provided for in the whole list. there is no element of mystery about them. the passions and sentiments illustrated are of the universal kind. and just as vague, uncanny and bizarre feelings play no part, so there is no resort to verbal tricks, such as meaningless repetitions, or onomatopoetic jingles. the language is dignified and classical. their great merit is the vivid and strong imaginative coloring with which situations and actions are portrayed. while in no sense folk-songs, they have always been great favorites with the german people. in 'the diver' the stress falls upon the portraiture of the raging deep and its awful horrors. it is a rhetorical _prachtstück_, which has done good service to many an elocutionist and declaiming schoolboy. schiller himself had never seen the sea, nor any body of water remotely resembling the charybdis of the poem. observation, as he humbly confessed, had given him nothing more awesome than a mill-dam,--the rest was homeric and imaginative; wherefore it no doubt gratified him when goethe reported from schaffhausen, after a visit to the cataract, that the line und es wallet, und siedet, und brauset, und zischt, was scientifically correct. 'the glove' merely versifies a simple incident of a brave knight whose courage is put to an inhuman test by his lady-love; he brings her glove from among the 'horrible cats', and then contemptuously cuts her acquaintance. in these two, the earliest of the ballads, description of the situation preponderates over the epic element, and there is no 'idea' except to narrate an extraordinarily brave action. in 'the ring of polycrates' one can discern progress in the mastery of the ballad form, though the subject was none of the best. based upon a story in herodotus, it is a poetic setting of the ancient idea that excessive good fortune provokes the anger of the gods and portends disaster. strangely enough schiller's poem breaks off with the recovery of the ring from the fish's belly, and the consequent warning and departure of the egyptian guest. one would expect an additional stanza or two, showing how the forebodings of amasis were presently realized. much better than any of the foregoing is 'the cranes of ibycus'. in the composition of this ballad goethe took a deep interest, giving several suggestions which were adopted by schiller to the great advantage of the poem. the greek legend does not explain, or explains variously, just why the murderers in the theater call out the name of ibycus when they see the cranes flying over. schiller supposes that the spectacle just then going on was a solemn chorus of the eumenides. thus the unaccountable exclamation of the murderers is connected with the mysterious power of the avenging furies. it is this use of the nemesis idea that makes the merit of the ballad. 'the knight of toggenburg' is a sentimental tale of romantic love, while 'the pledge'--a captivating and powerful version of the damon and pythias story--is a heroic ballad of loyal friendship. 'the errand at the furnace', wherein a spiteful tale-bearer meets the horrible fate he has prepared for the innocent and devout fridolin,--may be styled a ballad of pious edification. here, as a critic observes, schiller purposely essays a tone of childlike _naïveté_ which was foreign to his nature.[111] 'the battle with the dragon' has for its theme the moral majesty of self-conquest. with 'the cranes of ibycus' and 'the pledge', it forms a triad which may be regarded as the choicest fruitage of schiller's interest in the ballad. the later ones, 'the count of hapsburg' and 'hero and leander', are no less finished in the matter of form, but have more of a lyric tinge. we see that as a balladist schiller got his inspiration mainly from two sources: the traditions of greek antiquity and the traditions of chivalrous romance. he dwelt habitually in the idealisms of the past, and his controlling purpose was to make these idealisms live again in stirring poetic pictures. the present time, with its fierce national conflicts, the larger meaning of which was not yet apparent, seemed to him barbarous and depressing. in the prologue to 'wallenstein', it is true, he was able to survey the situation with a calm artistic eye and to see in the 'solemn close of the century' a period in which 'reality is becoming poetry'. but this is an isolated deliverance. his habitual mood was one of aversion, from which he sought relief by an escape into the kingdom of the mind. thus, in some stanzas on the opening of the new century, he laments that the english-french war has overspread sea and land and left no place on earth for 'ten happy mortals'. then he bids the friend to whom the verses are addressed take refuge in the holy temple of the heart, seeing that freedom and beauty dwell only in dreamland. a similar sentiment finds expression in 'the words of illusion', published in 1801, as a sort of pendant to the earlier 'words of faith'. the words of faith are freedom, virtue and god. men are exhorted to cling steadfastly to these eternal verities, whereof only the heart gives knowledge. the other poem is directed against the superstition of believing in a golden age, or in any external realization of the right, the good and the true. the final stanza runs: and so, noble soul, forget not the law, and to the true faith be leal; what ear never heard and eye never saw, the beautiful, the true, they are real. look not without, as the fool may do; it is in thee and ever created anew. these last-named poems belong to a type which the germans sometimes call the 'lyric of thought',--a name which is fairly appropriate to a goodly number of schiller's shorter effusions. other examples--to mention a few of the best--are 'light and warmth', 'breadth and depth' and 'hope'. they might be called lyrics of culture, since they regard the perfection of the individual,--the equipoise of heart and head, steadfast seriousness as opposed to showy sciolism, the preservation of hope and faith,--as a noble object of emotion. they are not intellectual in the opprobrious sense of the word as applied to poetry; they are suffused with warm feeling and their language is simple and natural. on the other hand they _are_ argumentative: they state propositions and draw conclusions the value of which must in the end be gauged by the mind. for this reason one who has no sympathy with schiller's idealism,--one who either never felt it or has lost it in the stress of life,--will not be touched by these poems, but will regard them as hollow. yet they are no more hollow than the lyrics of goethe or heine or shelley, though the illusion of sincerity is less perfect than in the work of these great lyrists. a pure lyric effusion, of the kind that seems to sing itself without help or let from the brooding philosopher, was not often attempted by schiller. perhaps his very best achievement in this sort is 'the maiden's lament', of which the first two stanzas, translated as closely as possible with reference to both substance and form, run as follows: the oak-wood moans, the clouds float o'er, the maiden sits by the green sea-shore. the waves are breaking with might, with might, and she breathes out a sigh in the gloom of the night, and her eyes are dim with weeping. 'my heart is dead, the world is naught, it brings nothing more to my longing thought, i have lived and loved,--earth's fortune was mine, thou holy one, take this child of thine, take her back into thine own keeping.'[112] such verses, and one might adduce further the admirable songs in 'william tell', show that schiller had in him, when he could find it and let it have its way, a lyric gift of a high order. as a rule, however, when he attempted to sing, the attempt resulted in a philosophic evaluation of the feelings expressed. thus in his well-known 'punch song', he is mainly concerned with the ethical symbolism of the four elements,--the lemon-juice, the sugar, the water and the spirits. in other cases he suggests an allegorical symbolism, and leaves the reader puzzling over an intellectual query that may or may not be worth puzzling over. examples are 'the maiden from afar', 'the youth at the brook', 'the mountain song'. he even wrote a number of professed poetic riddles,--which may be left without commentary to those who like that sort of poetry. the cultural poems of schiller have always enjoyed a high degree of popularity. a large number of his lines and couplets have become familiar quotations that come readily to the tongue or pen of the educated german. there is probably no modern poet who has taken a deeper hold upon the intellectual life of his countrymen. this is partly attributable to the fact that his idealistic sentiments appeal especially to the youthful. no poet that ever lived is better adapted to the needs of the school; none more infallibly safe and inspiring to the young of both sexes. for the riper mind and the larger experience his oracles are apt to lose somewhat of their impressiveness; for it is not to be denied that his poetry at its best is seldom supremely good. the divine spark that fuses rare thought and waiting expression in the white heat of the imagination and gives one the sense of artistic perfection is not often there. his verse is never cold, never trivial; but; it does lack artistic distinction. its highest claim is to give expression to the maxims of a ripe culture in tuneful verses and pleasing imagery that impress themselves readily upon the general heart. this is what he does in the most famous of all his poems, 'the song of the bell'. it is not great poetry, but it is a pleasing production which well deserves its popularity. 'the song of the bell' was first given to the world in the 'almanac' of 1800, after several years of incubation. its germ-idea is similar to that of the 'punch song'; that is, we have a mechanical process,--in the one case the mixing of a glass of punch, in the other the casting of a bell,--accompanied at its various stages by reflections of an ethical character. the bell-founder is an idealist with a feeling for the dignity of man and of man's handiwork. as he orders his workmen to perform the successive operations involved in the casting of a bell, he delivers, from the depths of his larger experience, a little homily, suggested, in each case, by the present stage of the labor. the master's orders are given in a lively trochaic measure, while the homilies move at a slower gait in iambic lines of varying length. the fiction is handled with scrupulous attention to technical details, and is made to yield at the same time a series of easy and natural starting-points for a poetic review of life from the cradle to the grave. the great charm of the 'song' lies in its vivid pictures of the epochs, pursuits and occurrences which constitute the joy and the woe of life for an ordinary industrious burgher. childhood and youth; the passion of the lover, sobering into the steadfast love of the husband; the busy toil of the married pair in field and household; the delight of accumulation and possession; the calamity of fire that destroys the labor of years; the blessedness of peaceful industry; the horrors of revolutionary fanaticism; the benediction of civic concord,--these are the themes that are brought before us in a series of stirring pictures that are irresistibly fascinating. to have felt and expressed so admirably the poetry of every-day life, and that at the very time when the romanticists were beginning to fill the air with noise about the prosaic dullness of the present time as compared with the middle ages, was a great achievement, and all the greater as schiller himself had not remained unaffected by the romantic doctrine. he could hellenize and philosophize, and, on occasion, he could romanticize; but 'the song of the bell' shows how deeply, after all, his feeling was rooted in the life of the german people. the 'almanac' for 1800 was the last volume that appeared, and after the removal of this exigency schiller's lyrical production diminished. his best strength was devoted to his plays, which in themselves, however, contain a large lyric element. the choral parts of 'the bride of messina' show the final phase of his art in its perfection. like these, the few independent poems written by him during the last years of his life are characterized by great beauty of diction and of rhythmic cadence, but in their substance they hardly compare with the best of his previous work. most noteworthy are 'cassandra', devoted to the pathos of foreseeing calamity without being able to prevent it, and 'the festival of victory', wherein the greek heroes, assembled for departure after the sack of troy, discourse amiably and profoundly upon the finer issues of life. in some of the shorter and more subjective poems there is discernible a note of sadness, as of a drooping spirit unreconciled, after all, to the stress of this earthly existence. this is heard, for example, in 'longing' and 'the pilgrim'. but from such sporadic utterances no large inference should be drawn respecting schiller's mental history. they proceeded from a sick man whose days were numbered. footnotes: [footnote 103: "the one remains, the many change and pass, heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly; life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity." --_shelley's "adonais"_.] [footnote 104: bulwer's translation.] [footnote 105: bulwer's translation.] [footnote 106: "social forces in german literature", p. 376.] [footnote 107: "dichtung und wahrheit", sechzehntes buch.] [footnote 108: buiwer translates the lines, somewhat lamely, thus: honour to woman! to her it is given to garden the earth with the roses of heaven! all blessed, she linketh the loves in their choir.... from the bounds of truth careering, man's strong spirit wildly sweeps, with each hasty impulse veering down to passion's troubled deeps.] [footnote 109: ehret die frauen! sie stricken die strümpfe, wollig und warm, zu durchwaten die sümpfe, flicken zerriss'ne pantalons aus.... doch der mann, der tölpelhafte, find't am zarten nicht geschmack; zum gegohrnen gerstensafte raucht er immerfort taback.] [footnote 110: "in the waste the beast is free, and the god upon his throne! unto each the curb must be but the nature each doth own. yet the man--betwixt the two- must to man allied belong; only law and custom thro' is the mortal free and strong." --_bulwer's translation._] [footnote 111: otto harnack, "schiller", page 274.] [footnote 112: der eichwald brauset, die wolken ziehn, das mägdlein sitzet an ufers grün, es bricht sich die welle mit macht, mit macht, und sie seufzt hinaus in die finstere nacht, das auge von weinen getrübet. "das herz ist gestorben, die welt ist leer, und weiter giebt sie dem wunsche nichts mehr. du heilige, rufe dein kind zurück, ich habe genossen das irdische glück, ich habe gelebt und geliebet."] chapter xvi wallenstein so hab' ich mit eignem netz verderblich mich umstrickt, und nur gewaltthat kann es reiszend lösen. _'wallenstein'._ the great play which signalizes the return of schiller to dramatic poetry must be accounted upon the whole his masterpiece. to be sure it is less popular than 'tell' and less immediately effective than 'mary stuart'. it has not the romantic soulfulness of 'the maid of orleans', nor the splendid diction of 'the bride of messina'. on the stage, too, its effectiveness is somewhat impaired by its great length. but in the imaginative power whereby history is made into drama; in the triumph of artistic genius over a vast and refractory mass of material, and in the skill with which the character of the hero is conceived and denoted, 'wallenstein' is unrivaled. well might goethe pronounce it 'so great that nothing could be compared with it'. its chief figure is by far the stateliest and most impressive of german tragic heroes. since the completion of 'don carlos' schiller had written nothing of any moment in the dramatic form. for nine years he had been occupied with historical and philosophic studies which he himself regarded as preparatory to some new and nobler flight of artistic creation. of course he had been aware all along, none better than he, that great poetry cometh not by theorizing; that theory could have at the best only a general regulative value. at the same time, with the example of lessing before him, he could not but feel that this regulative value might be very great. and so he had gone resolutely on his way, even after the dread truth had come home to him that he had not long to live and might never be able to reap the fruit of what he was sowing. he had studied certain epochs of history very carefully and had acquired a deeper insight into that tangled interplay of inward motive and outward circumstance which determines the course of events. philosophy had only deepened his early conviction that man's dignity, his heroism, consists in his free self-determination; but who knew better than he the infinite pathos of the battle between 'will' and 'must'? he had become familiar with the spirit and the technique of the greek drama and learned to admire its simple and stately architecture. latterly, however, he had been drawn toward the moderns and had found in the expression of the modern spirit-with all its idealisms, its heights and depths and mysteries of feeling--a higher artistic goal than antiquity had ever imagined. finally, his association with goethe had taught him the importance of looking fairly at life and portraying it not indeed just as it is, but in its essential human spirit. this, for him, was to idealize. two themes had been suggested by his historical studies, and both had haunted his thoughts for years,--'the knights of malta' and 'wallenstein'. the former, if his plan had been carried out, would have yielded a play of the classical type, with few characters and a severely simple structure. in the final balancing of the two subjects 'wallenstein' prevailed, no doubt because it seemed in advance the easier and the more promising. it pointed to a familiar field where history itself had already shaped in the rough a stupendous and fascinating tragedy. to reproduce the form and pressure of the thirty years' war, at one of its most exciting moments, was an alluring problem to a dramatist who had written a history of the struggle, and who had always felt that his strength lay in the historical drama. serious musings upon 'wallenstein' began, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1796.[113] the first great problem was, of course, the general plan of the piece,--how to select, dispose and concentrate. to quicken his imagination schiller commenced reading again upon the history of the period and soon perceived that what he already knew would be quite inadequate; that it would be necessary to go over the whole ground anew and more thoroughly. he found the material dry, chaotic and abstract; in short, lacking in nearly all the poetic elements which he would have thought indispensable a few years before. he could not treat it in his earlier manner. he had no love for any of his personages except max and thekla, whom he had invented for the purpose of infusing a little warm blood into an action which would otherwise have been dominated altogether by the cold passions of ambition, vindictiveness and fear. wallenstein was not great or noble; at best he could only be made terrible. the basis of his power was his army, and this--so it seemed to schiller at first--was too large and complex a thing to be effectively portrayed. then, too, his enterprise failed chiefly because of bad management, and he himself rather than fate was to blame for his catastrophe. this schiller regarded as the weak point of the whole subject; but he took some comfort from the example of 'macbeth'. notwithstanding these difficulties, however, he worked at his task with great eagerness, feeling that just such a subject as 'wallenstein' would prove the crucial test of his powers. his old theory that love is what makes the artist was now completely outgrown, and he was gratified to observe that he had learned to keep himself out of his work. so much for the influence of goethe, to whom he wrote, in november, 1796, as follows: with the general spirit of my work you will probably be satisfied. i might almost say that the subject does not interest me at all. i have never combined such coolness toward my theme with such a warmth of feeling for my work. my principal character, and the most of my subordinate characters, i have treated up to this time with the pure love of the artist. after some hesitation between prose and verse he began in prose, being led thereto partly by the advice of wilhelm von humboldt and partly by his own desire to produce this time an acceptable stage-play. his progress was at first very slow. there was endless reading to be done and endless rumination over the plot. in the winter season, with its close confinement and its lowered vitality, the invalid could accomplish but little. he fixed his hopes longingly upon the return of spring and decided to buy a house with a garden, so that he could muse and write in the open air. in may, 1797, the purchase was made, but by this time work on 'wallenstein' had completely stagnated and other interests were at the fore. he was back among the greeks. renewed study of sophocles, particularly of the 'trachiniae' and the 'philoctetes', had convinced him that everything hinges upon the invention of a poetic fable. to quote again from a letter to goethe: the modern poet wrestles laboriously and anxiously with accidental and subordinate matters and, in his effort to be very realistic, loads himself down with the vacuous and the trivial. thus he runs a risk of losing the deep-lying truth which constitutes the real nature of the poetical. he would fain imitate an actual occurrence, and does not consider that a poetic representation can never coincide with actuality, because it is absolutely true. a little later he took up the study of aristotle's 'poetics' and was delighted to find that the dread rhadamanthus was after all so very liberal and sensible. he had now reached a firm footing and was not to be dislodged even by aristotle, whose whole body of doctrine, as he did not fail to observe, was deduced empirically from concrete specimens of a particular type of play. it could not be canonical for all the world, but it was very instructive. schiller was glad that he had finally discovered aristotle, but glad also that he had never read him before. on returning to 'wallenstein' in october, after the summer claims of the 'almanac' had been satisfied, he noticed that what he had written was characterized by a certain dryness. it was evident that, in his strenuous effort to avoid his besetting sin of rhetoric, he was in danger of becoming trivial. he had still a sustaining faith in the goodness of his subject, but the great problem would be to make it poetical. it was necessary to find the middle way between the rhetorical and the prosaic. the practical result of these cogitations was a decision to write 'wallenstein' in verse. in versifying the completed scenes he found himself, so he wrote to goethe, before a different tribunal. much that had seemed very good in prose would not do at all; for verse tended to invest everything with an imaginative nimbus which rendered triviality and mere logic intolerable. but the new form brought with it a new danger--that of prolixity. it was necessary that the exposition account for wallenstein's conduct by exhibiting the sources of his power. this meant a dramatic picture of his wild and irresponsible soldatesca. the theme was boundless and schiller was a facile verse-maker. ere long he reported ruefully to goethe that his first act was already longer than three acts of 'iphigenie'. he was in doubt whether his friend had not infected him with a 'certain epic spirit' which tended to diffuseness. in his embarrassment of riches he decided to give the preliminary picture the form of a dramatic prologue having but a loose connection with the play proper, which was still conceived as a five-act tragedy. during the winter of 1797-8 he worked as he could, steadily upborne by the friendly encouragement of goethe. when summer arrived the last two acts were still unfinished, and the first three had grown to portentous dimensions. it was now that he decided to divide his unmanageable tragedy into two parts, 'the piccolomini' and 'wallenstein's death'; his idea being that 'the piccolomini', preceded by the dramatic prologue, which was now christened 'wallenstein's camp', would fill up an evening and prepare the way for the real tragedy of 'wallenstein's defection and death'. this plan, involving a reconstruction of the whole, was carried out in the ensuing months. at the urgent request of goethe, preparations were made to reopen the newly-renovated weimar theater with a performance of the 'camp' alone. as the piece was too short for this purpose, schiller hastily amplified it to a sufficient size and wrote for it a noble prologue, which ranks among the best of his poems. when played at weimar, in october, 1798, the 'camp' was well received as a picturesque novelty, but that was all. it gave no clew to what was coming, and there was nothing in it to stir the depths of human nature. 'the piccolomini' was completed in december and put upon the weimar stage, under schiller's personal direction, on january 30, 1799. as then performed it included two acts of 'wallenstein's death'. the first performance was a great success. the weimarians, with goethe at their head, were enthusiastic; and schiller, who had of late known but little of popular favor, found himself suddenly invested with a new renown. he was pleased, elated; from this time on he felt sure of his vocation as dramatic poet. returning to jena he applied himself steadily to 'wallenstein's death', completing it finally in march. it was first played on the 20th of april, preceded at short intervals by the 'camp' and 'the piccolomini'. and great indeed was the poet's triumph, now that his achievement could be judged as a whole. he had given his best after years of preparation, and the world saw at once that it was very good. the animosities aroused by the xenia lingered for a while in a few small minds, but it was of no use to fight genius with the missiles of petty malice. the germans had accepted schiller as their great dramatist. to form a right estimate of 'wallenstein' one must first look at it in a large way, remembering that structurally it forms a class all by itself. the name 'trilogy', in the technical sense of the greeks, does not apply to it, seeing that the 'camp' is not an integral part of the whole, but a dramatic prelude in an entirely different key. in a loose sense, to be sure, it forms a part of the exposition; but it can be omitted entirely, if one chooses, since everything technically necessary to be known is repeated in 'the piccolomini'. its characters are different and nothing is said or done that is vitally related to the ensuing complication. its purpose is to show the nature of wallenstein's soldiers and the grounds of their attachment to their commander. their loyalty is of course the great factor in wallenstein's position; it is because he relies upon their fidelity that he dares to dally with the thought of treason. but this fidelity of theirs, their sturdy _esprit du corps_, their unwillingness to be separated, could have been indicated in a scene, or in the report of a messenger; in fact it _is_ indicated in the memorial which they place in the hands of max piccolomini. the 'camp', then, with its eleven-hundred verses, is to be regarded as a military genre-picture, elaborated for its own sake into an independent piece. as a prelude it transports us into the _milieu_ of the tragedy, but without anywhere striking its key-note; for the tragedy is intensely serious, while the note of the 'camp',--notwithstanding an undertone of seriousness without which it could not have been the work of schiller,--is that of jovial humor. and the poet's scheme required just this effect in the prelude. one can hardly assent, therefore, to the suggestion of harnack[114] that it would have been well if the sentiment of loyalty to the emperor had been made more prominent and given a more worthy champion than the stolid tiefenbachers, who have nothing to say. had this been attempted it must have led to an adumbration of the coming tragic conflict,--which is what schiller wished to avoid. he wished that spectator and reader should accept the prelude as a thing of its own kind, complete in itself. it was for this reason that he gave it a distinctive meter, having convinced himself that meter of some kind was essential if he would avoid banality. with a wise instinct he chose the old free-and-easy tetrameter, which goethe had used with excellent effect in some of his early plays. in german this meter lends itself beautifully to the bluff, off-hand discourse of soldiers. it gives an illusion of realism while preserving the effect of poetry. particularly admirable is the art with which schiller has contrived to denote the motley variety of human types gathered under wallenstein's banner, while giving to each of his figures a fairly distinct individuality. with a little study of costume a painter could paint them all. there is the wretched peasant, who has been reduced to beggary and is willing to retrieve his fortunes by gambling with loaded dice; the sagacious sergeant, who always knows more than other people, and prides himself upon 'the fine touch and the right tone' that can only be acquired near the person of the commander; the depraved chasseur, who glories in fighting for its own sake, cares not for whom or what, and objects to discipline; the philosophic cuirasseur, who argues for a higher ideal and pities the woes of the producing class, but cannot help matters; and the fiery capuchin, who pronounces his wordy anathema against the whole godless crowd. what a picturesque assembly they make and how admirably they bring out the lights and shadows of the wallenstein régime! one wonders how an invalid recluse, a bookish philosopher like schiller, should ever have been able to write such scenes. the total effect of the prelude is to put one in a very good humor with the personages who figure there. one indeed feels sub-consciously that they are detestable--not a whit better than the angry friar paints them. one sympathizes intellectually with his fierce denunciation and pities the land that is exposed to such a scourge. and yet--such is the poetic glamour thrown over them--feelings of this kind never become dominant. it is like the squalid slums of a great city, when seen through the sun-lit morning mist. the reality is horrible, revolting. the soul of the philanthropist is pained--but not so the eye of the artist. schiller contrives that we see his vagabonds with the artistic eye and are drawn to them by their very picturesqueness. we quickly impute to them more virtue than their ways betoken; and when in their lusty final song they break out in a strain of lofty idealism: und setzet ihr nicht das leben ein, nie wird euch das leben gewonnen sein, one is hardly conscious of the incongruity. the dramatic fable devised by schiller for the tragedy proper carries us back to the winter of 1634. events extending over several months are concentrated by poetic fiat into the four days preceding the assassination of wallenstein, which took place on the 25th of february. the prominent characters fall into two groups,--the abettors of wallenstein in his treason, and the imperialists who work his ruin. the first group consists of historical personages, mainly officers, whom he had bound to him by one or another tie of selfish interest. foremost among these are illo, the count and countess terzky, and general butler, who turns against his chief and becomes the agent of his taking-off. the central figure of the other group is octavio piccolomini, whom schiller converts from a young officer of thirty into an elderly man with a grown-up son. octavio, in reality the trusted agent of the emperor, is regarded by wallenstein with a superstitious infatuation as his own most faithful friend. between these two groups stand the ingenuous lovers, max and thekla, imaginary characters who can make their perfect peace with neither side and are done to death in a pathetic struggle between love and duty. as we have already seen, schiller found it no easy task to mould the historical wallenstein into a satisfactory tragic hero. the character was lacking in nobility. to be sure it was not necessary to make him out an infamous traitor; for his character, his motives, the measure of his guilt, were subjects of debate among the historians, and the evidence was, as it still is, inconclusive. it was therefore quite within the license of a dramatic poet to take the part of wallenstein, so far at least as to throw into strong light all the palliating circumstances that could be urged in his favor. such were, for example, that he was a prince of the empire and as such had a right to conduct negotiations and to make peace; that he wished to give rest to a torn and bleeding germany; that he had been ignobly treated by the house of austria, and so forth. by laying stress upon these things and passing lightly over others, it was easily possible to save wallenstein from the detestation that is wont to associate itself with the idea of a traitor. but for an interesting tragic hero it is not enough to fall short of infamy. he must have some sort of distinction. he must be a towering personality. one does not go to the theater to be convinced in a moral or political argument, but to be carried along with a rush of feeling, for which the old term sympathy is perhaps as good a name as any other. a magnificent criminal will serve the purpose very well, as schiller had discovered in his early years, but he must be magnificent. now it was precisely this element of greatness that was lacking in the character of the historical wallenstein. no lofty idealism of any kind could be imputed to him. he was not a religious zealot, like cromwell or gustav adolf, nor was he a strenuous german patriot, like frederick the great. he was not even a great soldier; for while, as the head of a great host of marauding mercenaries, he made himself the scourge and the terror of germany, he never won a decisive battle against an equal enemy. the history of his fighting is largely a history of futilities. and when he formed the plan of a separate peace,--a plan which if promptly and vigorously executed might possibly have succeeded and have caused him to be numbered with the benefactors of europe,--he dallied with the thought until it was too late, fell into the pit which he had digged for himself, and, in trying to flounder out, met his death at the hands of an assassin who had a grudge against him. thus even his death was pitiful rather than tragic. it does not appear to be the work of that high nemesis which schiller noticed as dominating the career of shakspere's richard the third. to have succeeded as schiller did succeed, in the face of such difficulties, is a memorable triumph of the poetic art. by purely aesthetic means, without any appeal to political or religious passion, without requiring us to take sides in any debatable cause, but simply by the skill and subtlety of his drawing, he has invested wallenstein with an impressiveness such, as belongs only to the great creations of the great tragic poets. his overruling trait is ambition; and in the denotation of this, as of his whole relation to the countess terzky, the influence of 'macbeth' is obvious. and yet he is very far from being a copy of shakspere's hero, or a mere embodiment of ambition. on the contrary, he is the most complicate of all schiller's creations, and the most difficult to portray on the stage in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. as a good critic observes, he is 'fascinating and repulsive, admirable and contemptible, fantastic and cunning, cautious and frivolous, a mighty organizer and a helpless child, false and true, touching and terrible, a mixture of all possible qualities, and yet a unity, a totality'.[115] the promise of the prologue is admirably fulfilled: but art shall show him in his human form and bring him nearer to your eyes and hearts; she sees the man in all the stress of life, and for the greater portion of his guilt she blames the working of malignant stars. the last two lines, be it observed, involve much more than a mere allusion to wallenstein's superstitious belief in astrology. schiller's idea, schooled as he had been for years upon sophocles and shakspere, was to blend the fate-tragedy of the ancients with the modern tragedy of character. the two things were not incompatible, since in a broad view of the matter a man's character is his fate. it is to be observed also that the peculiar effect of greek tragedy does not depend upon the way in which the external [greek: moira] was conceived, but upon the fact that the hero seems to be battling, and was by the audience known to be battling, against the inevitable. the situation is not what he supposes, and the event will not be what he intends. he is the subject: of an illusion, an infatuation; and this [greek: ate] is the principal factor in the tragic effect.[116] now wallenstein's [greek: ate] takes the form of a blind and overweening self-conceit. he has the 'great-man-mania' hardly less than karl moor. accustomed to follow his own light, to command and to be obeyed, and to look with contempt upon the interference of priests and courtiers in the business of war, he thinks himself omnipotent. there is no power that he fears save that of the stars; and even that he imagines he can bend to his will by studious attention to astrologic portents. he has found it possible to raise and maintain a great army by taking good care of his officers and men; and appealing thus constantly to the lower motives of human nature, he comes to think at last that there are no others. when the swede wrangel suggests a suspicion of his chancellor that it 'might be an easier thing to create out of nothing an army of sixty thousand men than to lead a sixtieth part of them into an act of treachery', wallenstein replies: 'your chancellor judges like a swede and a protestant.' and when he finds that this sentiment of loyalty--_die treue_, one of the most ancient and powerful of motives--is still a real force in human affairs, he can only account for it as a curious superstition: 'tis not the embodiment of living strength that makes the truly terrible. it is the vulgar brood of all the yesterdays, the eternally recurring commonplace, that was and therefore is and hence will be. for man is fashioned of the trivial and customary use he names his nurse.[117] it would seem as if such a blind and superstitious self-worshiper could have but little chance of winning sympathy, and the less chance for the reason that he really does nothing in the play to justify his grand airs. his mighty deeds are a matter of hearsay. we are obliged to take his greatness on trust, as something growing out of the past. and yet schiller contrives, with splendid artistic cunning, that we do take him from first to last at his own estimate. his assumption of superiority appears perfectly reasonable; and even in the ticklish astrological scenes, about which schiller himself was in doubt until reassured by goethe, he never becomes ridiculous. his belief in destiny and his unctuous palaver about the occult connection of events do not detract from his dignity. one understands that his oracles are fallacious, that it is all a humbug; but so perfect is the illusion that instead of smiling one mentally associates him with other men undoubtedly great,--men like caesar, cromwell and napoleon,--who were haunted by more or less similar hallucinations. this is effected, in part at least, by bringing wallenstein into contrast with vulgar and commmonplace natures. in the presence of a real hero he would be a pigmy,--even under the searchlight of the ardent young max his effulgence pales somewhat,--but surrounded by the illos, the terzkys, isolanis and the rest of them, he is a moral and intellectual giant. one does not wish to belong to _their_ company or to believe in their arguments; and so when they urge him to act one is quite prepared to credit the mysterious oracles which assure him that the time is not yet ripe. thus even his indecision,--most damning of weaknesses in a great soldier,--does not seem to belittle him. one enters into the spirit of his self-defense, is half inclined to believe in his innocence and to sympathize with him, when the psychological moment arrives and the capture of sesina compels him to translate a traitorous thought into a traitorous deed. and even after this, when he stands forth as a declared traitor; while his trusted friends are secretly turning against him, and his unsuspected enemies are quietly plotting his doom; when, with a futile energy, he is making the plans that are yet, as he believes, to leave him master of the situation; and when, finally, in his bereavement and isolation, he is brought to face his miserable fate,--everywhere he looms up as a grand figure. schiller has taken good care that one shall not think of his treason or of his weakness, but rather of his imposing personality. that wallenstein produces such an impression is largely due to the character of his chief antagonist. octavio piccolomini is certainly one of schiller's most notable minor studies. it is he who stands for the cause of loyalty to which one naturally leans; but he is so portrayed that one soon distrusts and in the end almost despises him. and yet he is no villain of the extreme type so dear to schiller in his early years. octavio's conduct and his sentiments are technically correct. he is a faithful servant of the empire, a far-sighted and energetic commander and an affectionate father. the groundwork of his character seems much better entitled to sympathy than that of wallenstein. in the play, however, from the moment we hear of the secret order making him temporary commander-in-chief, we begin to suspect that he too is playing a game for profit. and when he lays his secret plans against wallenstein, while openly appearing as his friend; when he craftily works upon the vanity of butler, and instils into butler's small soul the poison of a murderous hate, one is not drawn to the cause which needs such championship. rationally and before the bar of politics, octavio's conduct is unimpeachable. he does his duty in baffling a powerful traitor in the most effective way. it is not his fault that wallenstein is deceived in him, and nothing requires that he go and undeceive him. he resorts to no tricks, he feigns no sentiments that are not his. he but tells the truth to butler in regard to the ancient matter of the title. it is no part of his plan that butler shall murder his former chief. and when wallenstein falls, not so much because of his present treason as because of his former duplicity, octavio is technically guiltless of the deed. and yet so skillfully is the portrait drawn, so subtly are the lights and shadows managed, that when the curtain falls one is little disposed to sympathize with him in his triumph. there is a world of ironical pathos in those last words of the play: 'to prince piccolomini'. a very important element in the impression produced by octavio, as also in that produced by wallenstein himself, is the fact that we are made to try them not at the bar of worldly ethics, but before the tribunal of the heart as represented by the young idealist, max. it is a weak criticism of wallenstein which objects to the love-story or regards it as a mere concession to the sentimental demands of the average play-goer. for the reason just stated it must rather be looked upon as a vital element of the plot. no doubt the play can be imagined without it and would in that case be more in accordance with history. but what a relatively cold affair it would be! the tragedy of the lovers is an important part of the nemesis that follows wallenstein from the moment of his taking the fateful step. it is this which makes in no small degree the real impressiveness of his final isolation. without it we should see in wallenstein a masterful spirit, like macbeth, playing fast and loose with the higher law and meeting an ignoble fate at the hands of enemies meaner than himself. in a sense the moral law would be vindicated, but how much more effective is the vindication when this masterful spirit first makes havoc of all that should be dearest to him as a man! it is quite true that the figure of max, like that of posa, is out of harmony with the general _milieu_. schiller was a lover of contrast, and in his skillful use of it lies a large part of his effectiveness as a playwright. to a certain extent his contrasts are made to order; that is, they proceed from the vision of the artist calculating an effect, rather than from the observation of life as it is. partisans of realism tell us that this propensity is a weakness, a fault; and such it is, beyond question, whenever it leads to forced and stagy contrasts. but surely no general indictment can lie against schiller for taking advantage of a principle which is perfectly legitimate in itself and has been employed more or less freely by the dramatists of all ages, including realists like ibsen and hauptmann. after all life does really offer contrasts of character as glaring as any that poet ever imagined, only they are not apt to be found in juxtaposition. the artist, however, has a perfect right to juxtapose them if it suits his purpose; that is, if it will really enhance the effect that he wishes to produce. if ever he departs too far from the familiar verities of life, he pays the penalty; for the judicious, instead of being thrilled by his pathos (or whatever it may be), are annoyed by his artificiality. this is the whole law of the matter, so far as its general aspect is concerned. as for max piccolomini, he is a perfectly thinkable character--in the time of the thirty years' war or at any other time. there is nothing supernal about him; he is simply the type of a brave and honorable young soldier who tries to walk by the higher law of conscience. there are always such men in the world, and schiller cannot be blamed for locating one in the camp of wallenstein, though history omitted to hand down his name. it is perhaps a little surprising that such a youngster as max should be in command of the great pappenheim's regiment; that, however, is a part of the presupposition which one must mentally adjust as best one can. within the limits of the play everything follows naturally. as a soldier he loves his commander and sides with him instinctively against the courtiers and politicians. his enthusiasm increases the 'mighty suggestion' that goes out from wallenstein; one feels that the object of such idolatry from such a worshiper must indeed be great. in the love-scenes max is always a man,--no trace here of sentimental weakness, or of any leaning to quixotic folly. in his relation to wallenstein, to octavio, and to thekla, his character is firmly and naturally drawn. and when his great disillusionment comes and he is forced to choose between love and duty, he makes a man's choice and his career ends as it must end--in a tragic drama. the drawing of the female characters in 'wallenstein' bears witness, like all the rest of the play, to the ripening power of the years that had intervened since the writing of 'don carlos'. that indefinable something that infects the earlier heroines of schiller and gives them an air of sentimental futility, or else of schematic unnaturalness, has disappeared. the countess terzky, in particular, is a strong portrait which one can admire without reservation. as for thekla, while her essence is an all-absorbing love for max, she has at the same time a will and an energy of resolution which make her the worthy daughter of her father. upon the whole she is the most lovable of all the heroines of schiller. it is her tragedy of the heart which renders 'wallenstein' perennially interesting to the young. and this is much; for does not goethe's shrewd merry-andrew declare that the great object of dramatic art is to please the young,--that _die werdenden_ are the very ones to be considered?[118] it is true that critics, speaking more for _die gewordenen_, have often objected that the love-story in 'wallenstein' is unduly expanded and that the lines have here and there, for a historical tragedy, rather too much of a sentimental, lyrical coloring. in the first of these objections, at any rate, there is some force. it was schiller's personal fondness for his pair of lovers that led him to spin out his material until it became necessary to divide it into two plays of five acts each. this, from a dramatic point of view, was unfortunate, albeit the reader who knows the entire work will hardly find it in his heart to wish that any portion of it had remained unwritten. properly speaking, the entire 'piccolomini' should constitute the first two acts of a five-act tragedy. it has no distinct unity of its own, but it takes an entire evening with what is properly the exposition and the entanglement of a play relating to wallenstein's defection and death. the result of a separate performance is that the climax of what should be the third act--wallenstein's momentous decision--comes right at the beginning of the second evening, and is thus not adequately led up to, save as one carries over the impressions of a preceding occasion. the effect is like that of dividing any other play between the second and the third act. one could wish, therefore, that schiller had seen fit in his later years to prepare a stage version which would have made it possible to present the entire play in a single evening. it would have been a difficult task,--hopeless for an ordinary theatrical man working by the process of excision,--but for schiller it would have been possible. and if he had attempted it, we may be quite certain that the love-story would have been very much abbreviated. as regards the lyrical and softly-sentimental passages, the cogency of the critical objection is not so clear. any opinion grounded upon an abstract theory of historical tragedy as such can have but little weight. schiller had no models for 'wallenstein'; and if he had had, there is always more merit in finding new paths than in following the old. historical tragedy without tender sentiment is possible, but it presupposes a public politically awake and an author upborne and inspired by a vigorous national life. schiller could appeal to no such public, and his instinct told him that a play based upon cold passions must itself be cold. so he chose to sentimentalize history, at the expense of detracting somewhat from its dignity, rather than to make frigid plays which no one would care to see or to read. and if we grant a _raison d'être_ to the sentimentalized historical drama, no fault can reasonably be found with lyrical passages like that at the end of the third act of 'the piccolomini'. schiller found the soliloquy at hand as an accepted convention of the stage and he converted it occasionally into a lyric monologue, as goethe had done before him in 'iphigenie' and 'faust'. this looked toward opera, toward romanticism, toward a mixture of types; but it was effective as a mode of portraying states of feeling. the lyric monologue is of course out of tune with the modern naturalistic dogma, but so is hamlet's soliloquy. and then it must be remembered that the naturalistic dogma was no part of schiller's creed. a noteworthy characteristic of 'wallenstein', as of all the plays that followed it, is its pervading seriousness. humor plays no part. there are no dogberries or grave-diggers, no quips or quibbles. schiller had but little of the far-famed quality of 'irony'. it did not lie in his nature to take a position aloof from the moving panorama of life and depict it impassively as it runs, with its sharp contrasts of grave and gay, of high and low. he is always a part of the world that he creates. for the other and higher method, as exemplified by shakspere and also by goethe in 'wilhelm meister', he showed a keen appreciation, and for a little while he imagined that he himself was catching the trick. that he did not altogether deceive himself is abundantly proved by 'wallenstein's camp'. after that, however, the ingrained seriousness of his temperament reasserted itself with all-controlling power. the gift of humor was not denied him, but the use of it in a grave drama was repugnant to his sense of style. in this respect he was more a disciple of the french and of the greeks than of shakspere. footnotes: [footnote 113: let it be said once for all (to avoid frequent references), that the following account of the genesis of 'wallenstein' is based upon schiller's letters--chiefly to körner and to goethe--beginning in november, 1796.] [footnote 114: "schiller", p. 286.] [footnote 115: bulthaupt, "dramaturgie des schauspiels", i, 288.] [footnote 116: notwithstanding frequent references to occult powers and overruling destiny, the greek idea of fate is quite foreign to "wallenstein". it is essentially a modern character-drama. cf. fielitz, "studien zu schillers dramen ", page 9 ff.] [footnote 117: nicht was lebendig, kraftvoll sich verkündigt, ist das gefährlich furchtbare. das ganz gemeine ist's, das ewig gestrige, was immer war und immer wiederkehrt, und morgen gilt, weil's heute hat gegolten! denn aus gemeinem ist der mensch gemacht, und die gewohnheit nennt er seine amme. ] [footnote 118: dann sammelt sich der jugend schönste blüte vor eurem spiel und lauscht der offenbarung, dann sauget jedes zärtliche gemüte aus eurem werk sich melanchol'sche nahrung.... wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen; ein werdender wird immer dankbar sein.--'_faust_'.] chapter xvii mary stuart wohlthätig heilend nahet mir der tod, der ernste freund! mit seinen schwarzen flügeln bedeckt er meine schmach--den menschen adelt, den tiefstgesunkenen das letzte schicksal--_'mary stuart'_. after the completion of 'wallenstein', in the spring of 1799, schiller was not long in selecting a new dramatic theme. the unwonted leisure was irksome to him, so that he felt like one living in a vacuum. at first, being weary of war and politics, he was minded to try his hand upon something altogether imaginary, some unhistorical drama of passion. but the aversion to history and the balancing of attractions did not last long. on the 26th of april he wrote to goethe as follows: i have turned my attention to a political episode of queen elizabeth's reign and have begun to study the trial of mary stuart. one or two first-rate tragic motives suggested themselves straightway, and these have given me great faith in the subject, which incontestably has much to recommend it. it seems to be especially adapted to the euripidean method, which consists in the completest possible development of a situation; for i see a possibility of making a side issue out of the trial, and beginning the tragedy directly with the condemnation, this time the historical orientation proceeded very rapidly. by the 4th of june he was ready to begin the first act, which formed his principal occupation during the next two months. from a letter to goethe, written june 18, it is clear that he was then thinking especially of the danger of sentimentalizing his heroine. she was to excite sympathy, of course, but, so he averred, it was not to be of the tender, personal kind that moves to tears. it was to be her fate to experience and to arouse vehement passions, but only the nurse was to 'feel any tenderness for her'. as we shall see, he did not remain entirely faithful to this early conception of mary's character. in august, the second act was completed and the third begun. then came a long interruption, occasioned by the demands of the 'almanac', the dangerous illness of frau schiller,--a lingering puerperal fever following the birth of her third child, caroline, on the 11th of october,--and finally by the distractions incident to a change of residence. for schiller had now decided to make his winter home in weimar, so that he might be near the theater. he was heart and soul in the business of play-making, and looked forward to devoting the next six years of his life to that kind of work. to körner he did not confide his new plan at first, though he wrote of it often to goethe. the removal to weimar took place early in december, having been made possible by an increase of stipend amounting to two hundred thalers. in granting this increase karl august intimated that it might be of advantage to schiller as a dramatic poet if he were to take the weimarians into his confidence and discuss his plays with them. 'what is to influence society', he sagely remarked, 'can be better fashioned in society than in isolation'; and he added a very gracious expression of his own personal friendliness. schiller thus found himself once more virtually a theater poet. the weimar stage, with its little and large problems, became the focus of his activity. as a good repertory was of prime importance, much of his time went to the making of translations and adaptations. thus he began a version of shakspere's 'macbeth', and had not finished it when he was again prostrated by a fresh and dangerous attack of his malady. after the completion of 'macbeth, in the spring of 1800, he returned to 'mary stuart', but found his progress impeded by manifold interruptions. to escape these he retired to the quiet of ettersburg, and there, early in june, he finished his tragedy of the scottish queen. a few days later, june 14, it was played at weimar, and from that time to this it has been one of the accepted favorites of the stage. one who saw the second performance has left it on record that the spectators unanimously declared it to be 'the most beautiful tragedy ever represented on the german boards'. madame de staël characterized it as the most moving and methodical of all german tragedies. schiller conceives mary queen of scots as a beautiful sinner who has repented. her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate them. but they are in the distant past; so far as the present is concerned, she is in the right. she has come to england seeking an asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined in one prison after another and finally brought to fotheringay, where she is subjected to petty indignities and denied the consolations of the catholic religion. she has been charged with a crime of which she declares herself innocent, has been brought to trial before a commission of judges whose jurisdiction she indignantly repudiates, and has even been denied the common right to confront the witnesses testifying against her. at the opening of the play she does not yet know the verdict of the court. this is the substance of schiller's masterly exposition; and the effect of it, upon the reader or spectator who has not prejudged the case, is to create an attitude of compassion for the prisoner. but the sympathy that one feels for the passive victim of political or legal injustice is not the kind which schiller regarded as 'tragic'. there had to be some sort of 'guilt', and it was also necessary that this guilt should grow out of the free act of the individual. but what was to be done with a helpless captive who was not free to shape her own fate? from the above-quoted letter to goethe, of april 26, 1799, it is inferable that schiller at first thought of representing the trial of mary. he soon saw, however, that this would make the effect of the drama turn upon political, religious and legal considerations of an abstruse and doubtful character. it would be with the play as it always had been with the historical controversy: the devout catholic would regard queen mary as the victim of brutal tyranny, while the protestant would think her deserving of her fate. schiller did not wish to take sides boldly in a partisan controversy, but to make a tragedy the effect of which should grow out of universal human emotions. so he felt happy when a 'possibility' occurred to him of dispensing altogether with the trial and beginning with the last three days of mary's life. the expedient that had suggested itself to him involved three unhistorical inventions: first, an attempt to escape, in which mary and her cause would become involved in the guilt of the murderous fanatic, mortimer; secondly, a supposititious love for leicester, who would use his influence with elizabeth to bring about a meeting of the two queens; and, finally, the meeting itself, in which mary's long pent-up passion would get the better of her and betray her into a deadly insult of her rival. after this her fate would appear inevitable and incurred by her own act. this concentration of the action brought with it certain other departures from history which are of minor importance. mary was beheaded in february, 1587, in the forty-fifth year of her age. at the time of her death her captivity in england had lasted about nineteen years. in order to account for the infatuation of mortimer and the still lingering passion of leicester, our drama imagines her some twenty years younger than she actually was.[119] as thus made over by schiller, queen mary is a pathetic rather than a tragically imposing figure. she appeals, after all, to the sentimental side of human nature and does not produce that effect of tragic sublimity which is produced by 'wallenstein'. the sympathy that she excites is like that one feels for a martyr. we see in her a royal _réligieuse_ who is persecuted by powerful and contemptible enemies and is unable to help herself. her death is decreed from the beginning and there is no way of averting it. the object of fierce contentions on the part of others, she herself does nothing, and can do nothing, to change the predestined course of events. she is never placed, as the real tragic hero must be, before an alternative where the decision is big with fate. when the end comes there is nothing to do but let her renounce all earthly passion and face the headsman as a purified saint. so far as she is concerned, there is no action at all, but only the dramatic development of a situation.[120] for, after all, the expedients just spoken of do not hit the mark exactly, in the sense of making the heroine responsible for her own fate. they bring in some new and exciting complications, which, however, do not affect the course of events at all. the catastrophe would have been just the same without them. this, nevertheless, is something that one does not see until we reach the end and look back. before the two queens come together it seems as if the meeting might be a turning-point in mary's fate; and this appearance is all that schiller aimed at. in a letter to goethe he spoke of this scene as 'impossible', and he was curious to know what success he had had with it. by this he meant, seemingly, that the futility of the scene, as affecting mary's fate, was predetermined by the nature of the subject[121]. mary was to die; it was impossible to make elizabeth pardon her or treat her claims with indulgence. and yet it was necessary to create the illusion of great possibilities hanging upon this interview of the two queens. this was a very pretty problem for a playwright, and the skill with which it is solved by schiller is the most admirable feature of the whole piece. the scene is not great dramatic poetry, for there is too little of subtlety in it,--we are simply placed between light and darkness, as one critic says,--but it is the perfection of telling workmanship for the stage. the preparation for the scene begins back in the first act, where mary declares to mortimer that leicester is the only living man who can effect her release. when she produces her picture and sends it to him for a token of her love, we begin to share her premonition that something may indeed be hoped for if her cause is taken up by the powerful favorite of elizabeth. the lyric passages at the beginning of the third act fix attention altogether upon mary's longing for mere physical freedom. there is no room for the suspicion that she wishes to use her liberty for any political purpose whatever. she appears as a noble sufferer whose whole being is absorbed in the delirious joy of breathing once more the free air of heaven. she surmises rightly that her unwonted liberty to walk in the park is due to leicester, and she imagines that greater favors are in store for her: they mean to enlarge the confines of my prison, by little favors to lead up to greater, until at last i see the face of him whose hand shall set me free forevermore. and the hope seems reasonable. may not the queen of england--so one is inclined to speculate--be moved to pity? may she not be persuaded that policy is on the side of mercy? may she not at least postpone the execution of the death-sentence and gradually increase her prisoner's liberty? when elizabeth appears it is quickly made evident that these hopes are vain. mary humbles herself to no purpose. her enemy, a consummate hypocrite herself, sees in her self-abasement nothing but hypocrisy. mary's earnest pleading, her offer to renounce all for the boon of freedom, are met with bitter taunts and accusations which culminate in the galling insult: to be the general beauty, it would seem, one needs but to be everybody's beauty. then mary loses her self-control and throws discretion to the winds. in a wild outburst of passionate hate she accuses elizabeth of secret incontinence and calls her bastard and usurper. thus she triumphs in the war of words, for her enemy retreats in speechless amazement; but there is no more room for hope in the clemency of elizabeth. the prisoner's fate is sealed even without the murderous attempt of the fanatic sauvage. it must be repeated that the whole famous scene is better contrived for the groundlings in a theater than for the lover of great dramatic poetry. mary's crescendo of feeling, from humble supplication to reckless defiance, gives an excellent opportunity for a tragic actress, but the whole thing is rather crass. the effect is produced by confronting mary with a vain and spiteful termagant bearing the name of the great english queen. one could wish, not only in the interest of historical truth, the obligation of which schiller denied, but also in the interest of poetic beauty, the obligation of which he regarded as paramount, that elizabeth had been painted here in less repulsive colors. she might have been allowed to show a trace of human, or even of womanly, feeling. she might have been represented as touched for the moment by mary's entreaty, and as holding out to her some small hope of life and liberty, under conditions which it would have been reasonable to discuss. if she had been so portrayed and then later brought back to a sterner mood by the attempt upon her own life and the discovery of mortimer's conspiracy, the final result would have been just the same; the meeting of the two queens would have served even better the dramatic purpose which it was meant to serve, and we should have had from it a noble poetic effect instead of a crass theatrical effect. the pathos of mary's position would have been increased, because it would have been made evident that, whatever her own inner thoughts and purposes might be, she was a standing menace to the english monarchy. thus her death would have appeared in the play what it was in fact,--a measure of high political expediency with which petty female spite had nothing to do. it is natural to raise the query whether these considerations, which are so obvious and are of the very kind that would have appealed to schiller, were overlooked by him or were set aside for reasons of his own. virtually he takes the catholic side of the controversy. the ugly traits of mary's character, while we cannot say that they are concealed with partisan intent, are so wrought into the picture that they do not impress the imagination as ugly at all. they are consigned to the dim limbo of the past and have the effect of winning for her that sympathy which human nature is always ready to bestow, in art if not in life, upon the magdalen type. on the other hand, the ignoble traits of queen elizabeth are brought into the foreground and made the most of, while her great qualities are hardly more than adumbrated in the picture. the result is a canonization and a caricature; and one cannot help wondering how schiller was brought thereto, when it would seem that his protestant sympathies, as we have known him hitherto, should have led him in the contrary direction. the key to the riddle is, no doubt, that he had begun to feel the influence of the romantic movement, which was well under way when 'mary stuart' was written. the influence is difficult to prove, because schiller always maintained ostensibly a very cool and critical attitude toward the efforts of the new school. his relations with its leaders were not intimate, and one of them at least, the younger schlegel, was his particular aversion. nevertheless he read their works; and while he always professed to be but little edified, there is abundant evidence that his ideas of literary art were considerably affected by the new propaganda. so, too, goethe was never a partisan of the romanticists, and he often spoke derisively of them; yet when he published the second part of 'faust', the world saw that he had learned from them all there was to be learned. an author is not always most influenced by that which he consciously approves. as for schiller there was much in common between him and the romanticists. he had worked out an aesthetic religion which completely satisfied him. in religious dogma of any kind he had ceased to take a practical interest. his ethical ideal was an ideal of harmony, of equipoise. his critical studies had cured him of his one-sided hellenism, and his historical studies had taught him that the middle ages were not without their own peculiar greatness. it was thus natural enough that the catholicizing drift of the romantic school should appeal to his aesthetic sympathies. when a man of poetic temper drifts away from his theological moorings and becomes indifferent to positive dogma, he is apt to value the historical religions according to their aesthetic qualities. that is best which has the most warmth and color and makes the strongest appeal to the imagination. it is along this line of reflection that we must seek the explanation of schiller's catholicizing tendency in 'mary stuart'. her creed, if reduced to dogma, would have offended his intellect, just as her political claims would have been rejected by his historical judgment. but he saw in her character that which could be poetically transmuted into a type of the noble sufferer, burdened with remorse, fated to contend with injustice, and betrayed by her own rebellious nature; but triumphing at last in the peaceful assurance that her death is the divinely appointed expiation of her sins. the drama was to represent a process of inward purification,--the attainment, after fierce storms and buffetings, of a calm haven for the soul. queen mary was to appear at last as the embodiment of all the qualities that seem most noble and enviable in one who "feels the winnowing wings of death". and of this idea what better dramatic setting can be imagined than the ceremony of confession and absolution in accordance with the forms of the catholic church? the solemn searching of the heart gives to mary's character a saintly dignity, as of one already beatified, and invests the whole scene with an incomparable pathos.[122] swinburne makes his mary declare, in angry scorn of woman's weakness, that even in death, as in the extremest evil of all our lives, we can but curse or pray, but prate and weep, and all our wrath is wind that works no wreck, and all our fire as[*] water. [* transcriber's note: so in original.] schiller's mary meets her fate in a nobler mood. she sees in death the 'solemn friend' who comes to lift the ancient burden from her soul. not only does she forgive and bless her enemies, but she sees in the very injustice of her death a part of the divine benediction: god deems me fit, through this unmerited death, to expiate my heavy guilt of yore. such a sentiment, it must be admitted, is rather too sublimated to harmonize perfectly with the political complications that precede. we seem to have come suddenly into another world; and so we have in truth,--the world of medieval mysticism. that which begins as a drama of conflicting political passions, ends as a drama of mystical edification. the rationalist does not see how the divine order can be vindicated by the triumph of gross injustice; nevertheless he recognizes that the ways of god are inscrutable, and he knows that such ideas, of the winning of peace through blood-atonement, were once intensely real to the christian world. schiller requires the rationalist to return in his imagination to this time and place himself in the emotional _milieu_ of the medieval church. returning now, in the light of these considerations, to the famous quarrel-scene in the third act, we see that a more favorable portrait of elizabeth, while it would have had the advantage pointed out, would have weakened the final effect which schiller wished to produce. it was necessary that mary appear as the victim of injustice in order that her saintly triumph might shine with the greater luster. moreover, mary's outburst of passion, for which there would have been no room if her enemy had been given a nobler character, was needed in order to make her earlier sins credible. without that scene we should have difficulty in believing that so excellent a lady could ever have committed those crimes of hot blood which weigh upon her soul. all this means that a noble-minded elizabeth would not have fallen in with schiller's artistic idea, but it hardly justifies him in making her the monster that she appears. in making her heartless he might at least have left her head in the possession of ordinary common sense. her off-hand employment of the stranger, mortimer, as an assassin; her stagy signing of the death-warrant, after a speech indicating that she acts from pusillanimous motives of personal spite; her silly comedy with davison about the execution of the death-sentence; her coquettish airs with the wretched leicester,--these are repulsive touches which are difficult to justify on any aesthetic grounds, and the total effect of which approaches perilously near to caricature. 'mary stuart' may be described, then, as a tragedy of self-conquest in the presence of an undeserved death. the stage climax is the meeting of the two queens in the third act, but the psychological climax occurs in the fifth act, when queen mary gives up her hopes of freedom and of life and welcomes the 'solemn friend' who is to lift the burden from her soul. in working out this conception schiller did not trouble himself greatly about the historical verisimilitude of his chief personages. one who looks for the real mary, elizabeth, burleigh and leicester, will not find them in his pages. the principal figures are drawn with less impartiality than in 'wallenstein', the subjective presence of the author is more noticeable. and yet, looked at in a large way, the play is an excellent piece of historical fresco-painting. the whole spirit of the time with its warring passions, its intrigues of fanaticism, is vividly and powerfully brought before us. the author's partisanship is aesthetic only, not religious or political. the many counts in the long indictment of queen mary, the motives and arguments of the english government, even the higher traits of queen elizabeth, are all brought out in the course of the play. nothing of importance is neglected, and the whole complicated situation is made admirably clear. the historical background, with its luminous vistas of european politics, really leaves very little to be desired. masterly, too, in the main, is the constructive skill with which all this history is brought to view in a dramatic action concentrated into the last three days of queen mary's life. the great difficulty which always besets the 'drama of the ripe situation',--to use a modern phrase for a thing as old as euripides,--is the difficulty of explaining the past without forcing the dialogue into unnatural channels; in other words, of orienting the public without seeming to have that object in view. as regards this merit of good craftsmanship, 'mary stuart' is here and there vulnerable. for example: in the fourth scene of the first act, the nurse, hannah kennedy, recounts to her mistress at great length the latter's past sins and sufferings, describing her motives, her infatuation, her heart-burnings and much else that the queen must know far better than any one else in the world. such passages, obviously intended for the instruction of the audience, were permitted by the traditions of the drama, but they are bad for the illusion. in 'wallenstein' they are much less noticeable,--a fact which indicates that schiller was now disposed to make his labor easier by availing himself of conventional privileges. in most respects, however, the technique of 'mary stuart' is excellent. the scenes are lively, varied and very rarely too long. everything is well articulated. dramatic interest is not sacrificed to any sort of private enthusiasm or special pleading. one who reads the history of mary queen of scots in any good historian, and endeavors to follow the maze of intrigues, uprisings, plots, assassinations and what not, is impressed by no other characteristic of the age more strongly than by its complete dissociation of religion from humane ethics. the religion of love to one's neighbor, though the neighbor be an enemy, had become a fierce fanaticism which scrupled at nothing and recognized no fealty higher than the supposed secular interest of the church. in his 'mary stuart in scotland' björnson makes the queen put to bothwell the question: 'you are surely no gloomy protestant, you are certainly a catholic, are you not?' to which bothwell replies: 'as for myself, i have never really figured up the difference, but i have noticed that there are hypocrites on both sides.' for the modern man this is an eminently natural point of view, and we might have expected, from all we know of schiller, that he would introduce into his play some representative of this sentiment. or if not that, we might have expected some representative of the religion of love. instead of either we have a romantic youth who has forsworn the protestant creed on purely aesthetic grounds. mortimer is on the whole the most interesting of the subordinate characters. he was obviously suggested by babington, but the coarse fanatic of history was too repulsive for a proper champion of schiller's idealized heroine. so the name was changed, and we get an imaginary youth who has been intoxicated by the glamour of the catholic forms as he has seen them at rome. the description of mortimer's conversion,--his sudden resolve to abjure the dismal, art-hating religion of the incorporeal word, and to go over to the communion of the joyous,--is one of the telling declamatory passages of the play. with the sentiment expressed schiller can have had, in the bottom of his heart, but little sympathy; but his artistic nature had begun to respond to the romantic propaganda. for the rest, mortimer is not a very convincing creation. one is a little surprised that a youth who purports to be so very soft-hearted, so very susceptible to the religion of the beautiful, should undertake so jauntily the rôle of murderer. as for his amorous passion, that is credible enough if, in accordance with schiller's direction, we think of queen mary as twenty-five years old. but in that case one's imagination has difficulty with that perspective of years which have accumulated the ancient burden of guilt. footnotes: [footnote 119: in a letter to iffland, written june 22, 1800, schiller directed that his queen elizabeth be represented as a woman thirty years old, mary as twenty-five.] [footnote 120: the thought is expressed thus by harnack, "schiller", page 324: "der eigentliche tragische konflikt, der den helden vor grosze entscheidungen stellt und endlich in sein verhängnis hinabreiszt, _fehlt_ in 'maria stuart'. die gefangene königin befindet sich im konflikt mit ihrer unwürdigen äuszeren lage, aber nicht mit sich selbst."] [footnote 121: compare, however, fielitz, "studien zu schillers dramen", page 49.] [footnote 122: even macaulay, who was certainly not the man to be captivated by anything in the scene save its poetry, thought the "fotheringay scenes in the fifth act ... equal to anything dramatic that had been produced in europe since shakspere."--trevelyan, "life and letters of lord macaulay", ii, 182.] chapter xviii the maid of orleans die schönheit ist für ein glückliches geschlecht; ein unglückliches musz man erhaben zu rühren suchen.--_letter of july 26, 1800_. it was well observed by wilhelm von humboldt that schiller's plays are not repetitions of the same thing, such as talent is wont to produce when it has once met with a success, but the productions of a spirit that ever kept wrestling anew with the demands of art. with each fresh attempt he essayed a really new theme, and taken as a whole his works exhibit a remarkable variety of substance. each one has its own individuality, its own atmosphere. and he himself wished that this should be so; it was a part of his study to avoid repeating himself. 'one must not become the slave of any general concept',--so he wrote to goethe in july, 1800,--'but have the courage to invent a new form for each new matter and keep the type-idea flexible in one's mind.' these words were penned with direct reference to 'the maid of orleans', which was begun very soon after the completion of 'mary stuart'. whether schiller then had in mind all those elements which subsequently led to the sub-title, 'a romantic tragedy', is not at all certain; it would be natural to surmise that he may have thought at first of a drama within the lines of authentic tradition. however, we know very little in detail about the genesis of this particular play. the letter just quoted tells of the usual initial difficulty in concentrating the action, the interesting occurrences being so widely separated in time and place. later letters hardly do more than occasionally to report progress; they do not discuss artistic questions, nor give any information as to books read. three acts were finished by mid-winter, and the whole on the 15th of april, 1801. schiller had now learned his routine; he felt confidence in himself and went ahead in his own way, with but little discussion of his plans. what he finally gave to the world is a tragedy in which he proceeds still further along the path of romantic idealization,--proceeds indeed so far that one can no longer follow him without some rather serious misgivings. the french peasant girl becomes an ambassadress of heaven, gifted with second sight and the power of working miracles. she not only leads the french troops in battle, but she herself fights with a magic sword and kills english soldiers with the ruthlessness of a veteran in slaughter. through it all, however, she is supposed to remain a tender-hearted and lovable maiden, such as the highest officers of france may wish to marry. by the command of the holy virgin, from whom her mission and power derive, she is bound to refrain from all earthly love. a momentary tenderness for the english general, lionel, which leads her to spare his life, presents itself to her conscience as an infraction of the divine command. she is overwhelmed with remorse and loses all her power. arm and soul are paralyzed. taxed by her superstitious father with witchcraft, she cannot find speech to defend herself and imagines that a thunder-clap is heaven's testimony against her. then she wanders about as a helpless and disgraced fugitive and is captured by english soldiers. with fettered hands she is compelled to witness a new battle, in which her countrymen, deprived of her aid, are about to be worsted. but through adversity she has been purged of her sin. her self-confidence returns, and with it her miraculous power. by the efficacy of prayer she breaks her chains and rushes into the fray. her reappearance brings victory to the french arms, but she herself is mortally wounded and dies in glory on the battle-field. it is evident that such a conception carries us back into the dreamland of pious romance. it presupposes a world in which things did not happen as they happen now; in which the incredible is assumed to be real and the course of events is shaped by miracle. to be sure, miracle is but sparingly used in the dramatic action itself, and the totality of the play is only a little more wonderful than the maid's actual history as given by authentic records. johanna's vision of the virgin is merely described retrospectively and is parallel to the voices of the historical joan. so too her recognition of the king, whom she has never seen before; her reading of his mind; her wonderful influence over the french army, and much more of the kind, are part of a well-authenticated tradition with which the skeptical mind must make its peace as best it can. and the feat is not altogether easy. the modern rationalist will say, and is no doubt right in saying, that if we knew all the pertinent facts accurately from first to last, the maid's story would fit perfectly into our scheme of scientific knowledge and would appear no more mysterious than other stories of obsession, genius and devotion. still the fact remains that upon ordinary human nature, without regard to religious prepossessions, the record of the maid's life, as brought out at her trial, makes an impression of the marvelous. this is quite enough for the purposes of a dramatic poet. but when schiller introduces a magic sword; when he makes his heroine talk with a ghost upon the battle-field, and break her heavy fetters by the power of prayer; and when we not merely hear these things reported, but see them,--then we are clearly in the realm of pure miracle. schiller's ultra-romantic treatment of the maid's story has often been sharply criticised, even by those who are in the main friendly to his genius; while those who are not friendly have always seen in it the complete flowering of his worst tendencies. critics have debated at great length the question whether he was 'justified' in introducing the supernatural at all. they have fallen back upon the ghost in 'hamlet' for a precedent and have tried to illuminate the subject with the light of lessing's famous comparison of shakspere's ghost with voltaire's in 'semiramis'. others have been shocked by schiller's bold departure from history at the close. on a first reading of 'the maid of orleans', macaulay recorded in his journal an opinion that "the last act was absurd beyond description. schiller might just as well have made wallenstein dethrone the emperor and reign himself over germany--or mary become queen of england and cut off elizabeth's head--as make joan fall in the moment of victory."[123] now opinions of this kind have a certain interest for the student of literature, but it is best not to take them too seriously. a dramatist is 'justified' if his intention is good and he succeeds in it. the proof of the pudding is not in the cook's recipe. if any dramatist in the wide world chooses, for reasons of his own, to experiment with an imaginary reversal of the verdict of history, there is no abstract reason why he should not do so. it is just as well, as schiller said, to 'keep the type-idea flexible in one's mind',--especially when we know that his experiment was received with ecstasy at its first performance and has ever since held its place in the affection of german play-goers. they are not troubled by its irrationalities, but receive them with pious awe, as schiller intended. for the reader, too, 'the maid of orleans' has a deep and perennial fascination. theorize about it as we may, it is a great popular classic, which has exerted an enormous educative influence and proves how thoroughly its author knew the heart of the german people. it is perfectly safe to conjecture, even without documentary evidence, that when schiller began to think of joan the maid as the possible heroine of a tragedy, his first perplexity related to the question of her 'guilt'. this was for him an indispensable ingredient of the tragic, whatever later theorists may think of it. although, as we have seen, he contemned the bondage of general concepts, he never came to the point of imagining a tragedy without 'tragic guilt'. but the story of joan offers no suggestion of guilt in any sense whatever,--she was the innocent victim of groveling superstition playing into the hands of insane political hate. for modern sentiment, catholic and protestant alike, and quite independently of the view one may take of her claims to divine illumination, her death at the stake was simply a horrible and revolting wrong. in comparison with those who put her to death she was an angel of light. to follow the lines of history here was for schiller unthinkable, since the end would have been a mad fatality, leaving no room for any feeling of acquiescence in the wise ordering of the world. if the story of joan was to yield a tragedy at all, it was necessary to have recourse to some bold invention which should bring her fate into harmony with the central tightness of things.[124] schiller solves the problem in the terms of religious mysticism: he endows his johanna with a supernatural power dependent upon her renunciation of earthly love, and then makes her fall in love contrary to the divine command. in one of her lonely vigils under the 'holy oak' the virgin appears to her and bids her go forth and destroy the enemies of her country and crown the king at rheims. when johanna asks how a gentle girl can hope to accomplish such a work, mary replies, a maiden chaste can bring to pass all glorious things on earth if only she renounces earthly love. thus far we are close enough to tradition; for the historical joan, who habitually called herself the maid, knew very well that love and marriage would be fatal to her mission. moreover, the idea of a non-natural power attaching to the state of virginity is sufficiently familiar both to christian and to pagan story. from this conception it is no very far cry to the idea that the very thought of love, bringing with it a sense of guilt, might cause an impairment of the maiden's divinely bestowed strength. these are mystical ideas, but the mysticism is of a kind familiar to the imagination of medieval europe and therefore quite permissible to a poet who had set out to romanticize. if, therefore, schiller had made his heroine fall in love in human fashion, and had then connected this lapse from virginal ideality a little more clearly with the final catastrophe, there could be no reasonable objection to his fundamental idea, and we should have, probably, the best imaginative basis for a romantic tragedy on the story of joan of arc. one has no right to play the rationalist in such a matter and argue that falling in love is no sin and cannot be felt as a sin by the modern mind. it can be so felt by the modern imagination, and that is quite enough. as the play stands, however, it must be allowed that the demand made upon the imagination is quite too severe. the love-incident is preposterous in itself and a mere episode at that, serving no purpose finally but that of a picturesque contrast. it is a sort of thing which one can put up with very well in a romantic opera, but not so well in a serious drama. to begin with, schiller makes his heroine a supernatural being. his johanna is not a peasant girl who imagines herself the bearer of a divine mission, and by the human qualities of purity, bravery, devotion and self-confidence, exerts a _seemingly_ magic influence upon the french army,--but she is actually endowed with superhuman powers. she carries a charmed sword which, against her will, guides itself miraculously in her hand to the work of slaughter. no enemy can withstand her. to all englishmen she is incarnate death. in the full frenzy of combat she meets lionel--for the first time. they fight and she strikes his sword from his hand. then, as he closes with her, she seizes his plume from behind, lifts his helmet and draws her sword to cut off his head. as his comely face is bared her heart fails her, her arm sinks and the whole mischief is done. no wonder that an early critic objected to a tragedy turning thus upon the weak fastening of a helmet! it is difficult to justify such a scene upon any theory of poetic art. the romantic drama since schiller's time has served up many a greater marvel than this; but it produces a truly poetic effect only by keeping within the limits of tradition. the poet who deals with siegfried and brunhilde, or with lohengrin or faust, may very properly require us to accept the miracles which pertain in each case to the saga. but such a being as schiller's johanna is found in no saga; she is a purely arbitrary creation. a very thoughtful german critic, bellermann, attempts to defend our love-episode by showing how schiller took good care in the preceding scenes to depict his heroine as susceptible to the tender emotions of her sex; in other words, to depict her as a maiden who might conceivably love and be loved. but earthly maidens do not suddenly fall in love with their mortal enemies upon the battle-field; and when a celestial amazon like johanna does so, one can only imagine that she has been mysteriously forsaken by her protectress in the skies. in that case, however, the fault lies with heaven. it is really quite futile to discuss the artistic reasonableness of this scene, since johanna's supernatural character takes her outside the range of human psychology. if one likes it and is touched by it, very well; but a prudent poet might well have had some regard for the very large number of people who would find such a scene ridiculous rather than touching. one could wish, in fine, that schiller had omitted his disturbing supernaturalism altogether. if it was necessary that his heroine fall in love, one could wish that he had let her affections fasten humanly upon the good raimond or some other honest frenchman. and he might well have spared us the black knight,--that revenant ghost of talbot, who comes to frighten johanna but does not succeed, and whose function in the economy of the play remains in the end somewhat mysterious. had he left out these things, the real greatness of the play would have suffered not a whit, and the artistic idea which kindled his imagination would have found a no less noble expression. that idea was to reproduce the spirit of the epoch which saw the birth of french patriotism. he wished to bring before his rationalizing contemporaries a picture of the middle ages as a time when, to quote the words of a recent american writer, "life was lived passionately and imaginatively under haunted heavens ".[125] what thoughts were agitating him at the very time when 'the maid of orleans' was taking shape in his mind can be seen from an interesting letter which he wrote to a certain professor süvern, who had favored him with a critique of 'wallenstein'. schiller answered under date of july 26, 1800, and one paragraph of his reply runs as follows: i share your unconditional admiration of the sophoclean tragedy, but it was a phenomenon of its time, which cannot come again. it was the living product of a definite, individual present; to force it as a standard and a pattern upon an entirely different epoch would be to kill rather than to quicken art, which must always come into being and do its work as a living dynamic influence. our tragedy, if we had such a thing, has to wrestle with the time's impotence, laziness and lack of character, and with a vulgar mental habit. it must therefore exhibit force and character. it must endeavor to stir and uplift the feelings, but not to resolve them into calm. beauty is for a happy race; an unhappy race one must seek to move by sublimity. these words, which contain implicitly the whole romantic confession of faith, give the right point of view from which to judge 'the maid of orleans'. schiller felt that the need of the hour was to escape from the banality of conventional ideas and feel the thrill of sympathy with great, overmastering emotions. to-day this seems a very simple and obvious matter, because we have learned to think of the imaginative appeal of poetry as the corner-stone of the temple. but a hundred years ago the outlook was different. notwithstanding the revolt which goethe and schiller had themselves led against the self-complacent rationalism of the century, the old spirit was still potent even in germany, where the reaction first gathered force. among the intellectual classes religion had well-nigh ceased to be reckoned with as a mystic passion of the soul. several decades of tolerance,--practically an excellent method for keeping the sectaries from one another's throats,--had produced a public sentiment which looked with mild contempt upon all religious fervors. when schleiermacher published his famous 'discourses on religion', in the year 1799, he addressed them 'to the cultivated among its despisers',--which was only his phrase for what we should call the general public. nor was the case very different with respect to another mystic passion, which derives from the tribal instinct of the primitive savage and which the civilized man calls patriotism. the lesson of frederick the great had not been entirely forgotten, but it was lying inert,--waiting to be kindled into fiery zeal by the humiliations of jena and tilsit and wagram. schiller was no mystic, nor was he, in our narrow sense, a patriot; but he had a poet's feeling for the sublimity of great and passionate devotion. he was a man of the eighteenth century, and as thinker he understood full well its imperishable claims to honor; but as poet it was not for him to fall into that cynical, vulgarizing drift which had led the greatest frenchman of his day to make joan of arc the butt of his lewd wit. voltaire saw in her one of the pious frauds of that infamous he was bent on crushing; for her national mission he had little feeling, because of his fixed idea that nothing good could have come from the ages of superstition.[126] schiller saw in her, and was the first great poet to see what all the world sees now, the heroic deliverer of her country from a hated foreign invader. and so he threw down the gauntlet to his century and lifted the _ludibrium_ of the french wits to the pedestal of an inspired savior of france. it was a great deed of poetry; in the presence of which a right-minded critic, after duly airing his little complaints, as critics must, will be disposed to doff his hat and say bravo! well might schiller declare in the stanzas entitled 'the maid of orleans': the world brooks not nobility,--disdaining, defaming, smirching, goes its vulgar gait;- but fear thou not, true hearts are still remaining, to love thee for the heart that made thee great. in its inmost essence, then, 'the maid of orleans' is a drama of patriotism. it is johanna's love of country that gives her a measure of human interest, in spite of the supernaturalism that invests her. were she not thus the representative of a passion that is intensely real, and that has come to be regarded, for better or for worse, as preëminently noble, she would now possess but very languid interest for the sublunary mind. her mystical attributes and her unthinkable love-affair would place her beyond the range of natural sympathy. as it is, one is made to forget, or at least to pass lightly over, everything else but her love for france. she wins favor by her patriotic devotion, and when the end comes one thinks of her under the familiar rubric of the hero dying for his country. the episode with lionel and the humiliation of the cathedral scene have all been forgotten, and one does not mentally connect these things with johanna's death in any way whatsoever. her death is sufficiently provided for from the beginning in her own fatalistic prevision: johanna goes and never shall return. it must be admitted that a heroine who excites interest chiefly by virtue of her patriotic sentiments and the bravery of her conduct does not represent the highest type of poetic creation. the muse will always lend virtue and bravery to any common poetaster for the mere asking; but she does not so readily vouchsafe a convincing semblance of complex human nature. a distinctly human johanna, with a definite girlish individuality and a character all her own,--such as goethe might have given us had he turned his thoughts in that direction,--would have been a higher and a more difficult achievement than the schematic creature of schiller's imagination. such a johanna, however, would hardly be thinkable on the stage: the final horror of her fate would be intolerable in the visible representation, while to leave it unrepresented would be to admit the reasonableness of schiller's departure from history. shall we then take refuge in the position that the maid's story is not adapted to dramatic treatment at all? such a position is at once rendered absurd by the perennial popularity and effectiveness of schiller's play. until some great realistic poet shall prove the contrary by deeds, the mere critic is certainly justified in holding that, whatever may be thought of his love-episode, the ghost and the miraculous escape from bondage, the general requirements of the theme are best met by schiller's romantic treatment. turning from the heroine to the other characters, one finds but little that invites discussion. johanna is the central sun of the system, and in the romantic light that goes out from her the others seem rather pale and uninteresting. father thibaut impresses one in the prologue as a little too refined, intelligent and far-sighted for the rôle of besotted superstition and misunderstanding which he subsequently plays in the cathedral scene. la hire and the duke of burgundy and the bastard of orleans, who preserves only a suggestion of the rugged soldier that once bore his name, are there only to illustrate the divine magic of the maid. two of them wish to marry her, and when we add the englishman, lionel, and the french peasant, raimond, we have a quartet of lovers. verily the little god cupido would seem to be something too prominent and ubiquitous for a military drama. history required that the dauphin should be a weakling, and such he is in the play; but he too is romanticized through his devotion, to the tender and soulful agnes. more strongly drawn, if not exactly more lifelike, than any of these, are the sensual old fury, isabeau, and the english general, talbot, whose fierce valedictory to this folly-ridden earth is deservedly famous: soon it is over, and to earth go back- to earth and the eternal sun--the atoms erstwhile combined in me for pain and joy. and of the mighty talbot, whose renown but now filled all the world, nothing remains except a handful of light dust. so ends the life of man--and all we bear away, as booty from the battle of existence, is comprehension of its nothingness and sovereign contempt of all the ends that seemed exalted and desirable. in short, the characters of 'the maid of orleans' leave much to be desired on the score of verisimilitude. one has the feeling all along, as in the case of goethe's 'helena', of being in an artificial world made to order by an imaginative fiat. to enjoy the play it is necessary to put aside one's rationalism and surrender oneself to the illusion one knows that the author wishes to produce. 'the maid of orleans' does not compel the surrender like 'wallenstein'; one must meet the poet half-way. that done, however, everything is in order, for the technique of the play is faultless. it is not easy to point to a better piece of dramatic exposition than the scenes which precede the appearance of johanna in the french army. the prologue is perhaps a trifle too long, but serves admirably to give the tragic keynote, by picturing the shepherd-girl of dom remi leading a life apart from that of her family, given to strange brooding, and at last receiving the sign from heaven, which she prophetically feels to be the call of death. and then the desperate plight of france; the helpless weakness of the king; the disgust and discouragement of the generals; and after this the news of a long unwonted victory, followed quickly by the appearance of johanna and the magic change of the military situation,--how vividly it is all brought before one! and what a fine scene is that at the end of the second act, in which burgundy is won over! one who is not touched by this portion of the play; who does not return to it with ever-renewed pleasure after each sojourn in the choking air of naturalism, is--to state the case as gently as possible--unfortunately endowed. footnotes: [footnote 123: trevelyan, "the life and letters of lord macaulay", ii, 249.] [footnote 124: according to böttiger, whose statements are not always trustworthy in matters of detail, schiller said to him in november, 1801, that he had at one time planned three different plays on the subject of the maid of orleans, and that he would have executed all three if he had had time. one of these was to have been a historical tragedy, with johanna dying at the stake in rouen.--this can hardly mean anything more than that schiller was in doubt for a while as to the best treatment of his theme. the idea of his actually making three different plays on the same subject is quite too preposterous. his promise, in a letter of march 1, 1802, that _if_ he should write a second 'maid of orleans', göschen should publish it, is only an author's playful 'jollying' of a friendly publisher. the passage from böttiger is quoted at length by boxberger in his introduction to 'the maid of orleans' (kürschners deutsche national-litteratur, vol. cxxii, second part, page 211).] [footnote 125: lewis e. gates, "studies and appreciations."] [footnote 126: compare morley's "voltaire", chapter iii.] chapter xix the bride of messina das leben ist der güter höchstes nicht, der übel grösztes aber ist die schuld. _'the bride of messina'_. after the completion of 'the maid of orleans', in the spring of 1801, schiller found himself once more the unhappy victim of leisure. a new task was needed to make life tolerable, but what should it be? 'at my time of life', he remarked in a letter to körner, 'the choice of a subject is far more difficult; the levity of mind which enables one to decide so quickly in one's youth is no longer there, and the love, without which there can be no poetic creation, is harder to arouse.' ere long, having a mind to try his hand upon a tragedy in 'the strictest greek form', he was musing upon that which in time came to be known as 'the bride of messina'. for the present, however, and for some time to come, he did not advance beyond very general planning. in the summer he spent several weeks with körner in dresden, during which literary labor was suspended. after his return to weimar, in september, he found the conditions without and within unfavorable to a serious creative effort, so he undertook a german version of gozzi's 'turandot'. this occupied him until january, 1802. then it was a question whether his next theme should be 'the knights of malta', or 'warbeck', or 'william tell', the last having begun to interest him because of a persistent rumor that he was working upon a play of that name. but none of the four projects carried the day immediately, and the winter and spring passed without bringing a decision. he began to be worried over the 'spirit of distraction' that had come upon him. in august, however, the long vacillation came to an end, and 'the bride of messina' began to take shape on paper. he found it more instructive than any of his previous works. it was also, he remarked in a letter, a more grateful task to amplify a small matter than to condense a large one. once begun, the composition proceeded very steadily,--but little disturbed by the arrival, one day in november, of a patent of nobility from the chancellery of the holy roman empire,--until the end was reached, in february, 1803. the play may be described as an attempt to treat a medieval romantic theme in such a manner as to convey a suggestion of greek tragedy. although written with enthusiasm it is not the bearer of any heartfelt message and must be regarded as a study of theory rather than of life. the highly artificial plot does not reflect any past or present verities of human existence upon the planet earth. nor can we call the play an imitation of the greeks, its general atmosphere being anything but greek. the dialogue is not written in classical trimeters, but in the modern pentameter; while the speaking chorus, divided into two warring factions and going about here and there as the scene changes, has little resemblance to anything found in the greek drama. on the other hand, there _is_ a chorus, and there are dreams which take the place of oracles. there is also a further suggestion of the antique in the pervading fatalism of the piece. of all schiller's works 'the bride of messina' has been the most variously judged by the critics. some have seen in it the very perfection of art, others the climax of artificiality. schiller himself reported, after seeing it performed at weimar, in 1803, that he had 'received for the first time the impression of true tragedy'. there is also an authentic record to the effect that goethe was inexpressibly delighted with it and declared that 'by this production the boards had been consecrated to higher things'. wilhelm von humboldt wrote that nothing could surpass the majesty of the play, and körner assigned it a high rank among schiller's productions. on the other hand it was spoken of by the satellites of the disgruntled herder as a 'singular _fata morgana_', and a 'shocking monstrosity'; while f.h. jacobi characterized it as a 'disgusting spook made by mixing heaven and hell'. and these discordant voices, in all their vehemence of expression, have been echoed by later critics; so that in the case of this particular drama, as bellermann observes, it is hardly possible to speak of a settled average opinion. on one point, nevertheless, there is very general agreement: namely, that the diction of the choruses is magnificent in its kind. nothing finer in german poetry anywhere. from the outset critical discussion of 'the bride of messina' has turned mainly upon its antique elements, that is, upon its chorus and its treatment of the fate-idea. there has been endless comparison of sophocles' 'king oedipus' and endless logomachy about free-will and predestination in their relation to guilt. and such discussion is pertinent, because we have schiller's own word that he wished to vie with sophocles. an oft-quoted passage from a letter to wilhelm von humboldt runs as follows: my first attempt at a tragedy in the strict form will give you pleasure. from it you will be able to judge whether i could have carried off a prize as a contemporary of sophocles. i do not forget that you have called me the most modern of modern poets, and have thus thought of me in the sharpest contrast to everything that is styled antique. i should thus have reason to be doubly pleased if i could wrest from you the admission that i have been able to make even this strange spirit my own. at first blush this looks like an abandonment of the position stated so clearly and emphatically in the letter to süvern (page 380). in reality, however, it is not so. schiller was not concerned to imitate sophocles, nor to revive an ancient form with, pedantic rigor. he was as far as possible from a one-sided worship of the greeks. his reference to his 'strict form' hardly means more than is implied in simplicity of plot, fewness of characters and observance of the unities. he did not write 'the bride of messina' in any doctrinaire spirit,--either to reform the german drama, or to furnish a model for imitation. the play is simply an aesthetic experiment; a tentative excursion into a field confessedly 'strange'. what schiller wished was to produce upon a modern audience, by an original treatment of a medieval theme, a tragic effect similar to that which, as he supposed, must have been produced upon an athenian audience by a play of sophocles,--more especially by the 'king oedipus'. for the groundwork of his tragedy he resorted to the well-worn fiction of the hostile brothers, giving it this form: two princes grow up in mutual hatred, but are finally reconciled through the influence of their mother. both fall in love, each without the other's knowledge, with a young woman of whose family they know nothing, and who is in reality their sister. one day the younger prince finds the object of his passion in the arms of his brother, who has just learned the secret of the girl's birth. instantly the old hate blazes up anew, and in a paroxysm of blind rage don cesar kills his brother. then, when he discovers the whole truth, he expiates his crime by a voluntary death.--in this scheme, it will be observed, the salient point is the fratricide committed in a sudden frenzy of passion: everything else leads up to this or grows out of it. from a modern point of view the crime is adequately accounted for by the character of don cesar; but if the story was to be given a sophoclean coloring it was necessary that the horrors appear as the necessary evolution of ineluctable fate. in employing the fate-idea for dramatic purposes the greek poet had, in the first place, the great advantage of a definite mythological tradition which was known to everybody. in the second place, he wrote for people who still believed in oracles and received them seriously as credible manifestations of divine foreknowledge. again, he could count on a living belief in the hereditary character of guilt: the belief that a good man, leading his life without evil intent, might be led to commit horrible and revolting acts because of some ancient taint in his blood; or because the gods, in their inscrutable government of the world, had decreed that he should thus sin and suffer. just how far the greek conception of moral responsibility differed in a general way from the modern, is a trite question which need not be gone into here. suffice it to say that the difference has often been too broadly and too sharply stated. not all greek tragedies were tragedies of fate,--indeed it was a saying of schiller that the 'king oedipus' constitutes a genus by itself--nor is there any definite unitary conception which can be described as 'modern' for the purpose of a contrast. after all, that which affects us in tragedy is very much the same as that which affected the greeks, namely, the sense of life's overruling mystery. and whether we refer the happenings of life to an all-wise providence, or to a scientific order which is so because it is so, they remain alike incommensurable with our ethical feeling. the bullet of a crazed fanatic, or a lethal germ in a glass of water, may end the noblest career in horrible suffering. in the drama, it is true, we prefer that no use be made of such mad calamities and that what befalls a man shall at least seem to grow out of his character. but then a man's character is the effect of a hundred subtle causes which began their operation in part before he was born; so that there is an element of essential truth in the saying that character is fate. we have become aware that there is a sense in which it is exactly true that the sins of the father are visited upon the children. in short, modern thought has not tended to clear up but rather to deepen the mystery of life in its relation to antecedent conditions; of fate in its relation to desert. our common sense, as embodied in law, treats a man as responsible for the good or evil that he personally intends. this is no doubt an excellent practical rule, without which society could hardly exist at all; but looked at philosophically it does not really touch the heart of the great mystery which is the theme of 'king oedipus' and of 'the bride of messina'. the young oedipus, while living at corinth with his foster-father, polybus, whom he supposes to be his real father, is told by the oracle that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. what should he do? commit suicide in order to stultify the oracle, or resolve to kill no man and to marry no woman? the story imputes to him no blame for doing neither of these things. he acts as a man would act who sees himself confronted by an evitable danger. he leaves corinth, but the very step that he takes to avoid his fate brings it surely to pass. he meets a stranger in the road. a quarrel arises over the question of passing,--a quarrel as to the merit of which the legend is silent. oedipus kills his antagonist, and that antagonist is his father. then he delivers thebes from the scourge of the sphinx and receives the hand of queen jocasta as his due reward. he has forgotten the oracle, or imagines that he has eluded his foreordained fate by leaving corinth; but the oracle has fulfilled itself, as the spectator knew from the beginning that it would. the interest of the tragedy turns largely upon the overwhelming remorse of oedipus and jocasta when they discover the truth. to match these conditions schiller requires us to imagine a medieval prince of messina reigning at some indefinite time in the middle ages. while his two sons are yet children he has a dream in which he sees two laurel-trees growing out of his marriage-bed, and between them a lily which changes to flame and consumes his house. an arabian astrologer, for whom he has a heathenish partiality, interprets the dream as meaning that a daughter yet to be born will cause the destruction of his dynasty. so when a daughter is born he orders her put to death. but the mother has also had _her_ dream,--of a lion and an eagle bringing their bloody prey in sweet concord to a little child playing on the grass. a pious christian monk explains this dream as meaning that a daughter will unite the quarrelsome sons in passionate love. so the queen saves the life of her new-born child and has her secretly brought up in a convent not far from messina. as long as the father lives the hostile brothers are restrained from fighting, but when he dies their feud breaks out in open war. each surrounds himself with retainers, messina is torn by factional strife, and there is danger from external enemies. citizens implore the mother to effect a reconciliation, failing which they threaten a revolution. at last she succeeds in arranging a peaceful meeting in her presence. such is schiller's presupposition,--a singular blend of christianity and paganism, such as at once gives difficulty to the imagination. a prince reigning under a christian order of things, in a city of churches and convents, yet willing to murder his child on account of a dream interpreted to him by an arab soothsayer, is not a very plausible invention. and the same may be said of much that follows. in half-a-dozen places the tragedy would come to an untimely end did not one or another of the characters conveniently refrain from doing or saying what a human being would inevitably do or say under the circumstances. beatrice grows up in the convent without taking vows and is kept in ignorance of her lineage. though her mother longs for her, she never sees her, and communicates with her only through the old servant, diego. such conduct is perhaps intelligible during the life of the king, but with him out of the way one would expect the mother to take her daughter home without a moment's delay. instead of that she waits two months, merely sending word to beatrice to prepare for some unnamed change of fortune. she also keeps the secret from her sons during these two months, without any sufficient reason. when questioned on the subject by don cesar in the play, she makes the bitter feud of the brothers her excuse: how could i place your sister here atwixt your bare and reeking swords? in your fierce rage you would not hearken to a mother's voice; and could i have brought her, the pledge of peace, the anchor of my every dearest hope, to be perchance the victim of your strife? but this is strange logic. one does not see at all how the sister's life would have been imperiled; and if she was to be the pledge of peace,--as the mother's dream seemed to foretell,--then there was the best of reasons for bringing her home at the earliest possible moment. and then how singularly don manuel behaves! he is the elder son, and as such must be heir to the throne; but of that we hear nothing in the play. he falls in love with beatrice, sees her often during a period of months, and secures from her a promise of marriage; but he never tells her who he is, nor does he ask her a question about her own lineage. when she tells him of an old man who comes to her occasionally as messenger from her unknown family, and who has at last bidden her prepare for a change of abode, he makes no attempt to see the stranger and find out whither his bride is to be taken. for such conduct _he_ can have no possible reason, but schiller has one; for were don manuel once to set eyes on the old family servant, diego, a clearing-up would of course be inevitable. instead of doing the one natural thing, don manuel abducts his sweetheart during the night, with her consent, and takes her to a garden in messina. there he leaves her alone to await his coming,--a singular thing for a prince to do with his bride, but necessary to the tragedy. more dubious still is the remarkable silence of beatrice when she is exposed to the stormy wooing of don cesar in the garden. the fiction is that he has caught a glimpse of her two months before, on the occasion of his father's funeral, and has since been constantly searching for her. having now found her, through one of his spies, he makes love to her jubilantly through sixty lines of text, but she answers never a syllable and lets him go away in supposed triumph. a bare word from her, such as a woman could not help saying under the circumstances, would end the complication, since it would send don cesar away baffled; and then there would be no occasion for his returning to the garden a little later. maidenly fright and consternation cannot account rationally for such behavior; one sees that she holds her tongue because to set it in motion would be dramaturgically disastrous. but the climax of unnaturalness is reached in the scene between the queen and her two sons, when old diego reports that beatrice has been abducted from the convent--presumbly by moorish corsairs. the distracted mother urges her sons to go at once to the rescue of their sister. but here a difficulty presents itself. if the brothers are to have the faintest chance of finding their sister, it is clearly of the first importance that they know something about her, and particularly that they know where she has been kept in hiding. now this knowledge can be safely imparted to don cesar but not to don manuel. so don cesar is made to rush away hotly, at all adventure, without the slightest clew of any kind,--the reason being that it would not do for him to hear that which diego is about to tell. the younger brother thus conveniently out of the way, don manuel, who has begun to suspect the truth, implores his mother to tell him where the lost beatrice has been concealed. evidently the only natural part for the mother is to answer the question. but that would not do; so she interrupts him and urges him away with such senseless exclamations as 'fly to action!' 'follow your brother's example!' 'behold my tears!' and when at last he succeeds in bringing out the fateful inquiry, she only answers: the bowels of earth were not a safer refuge! then don manuel ceases to press his question and stands quietly by while diego tells his remorseful story of beatrice's visit to the church on the day of her father's funeral. strangely enough this recital suggests to don manuel the hopeful suspicion that his sister and his sweetheart may, after all, not be the same person; so he rushes away to question beatrice, when he must know that his mother is the one person in the world who can best resolve his doubts. then, when he is gone, don cesar comes back, and the mother very calmly proceeds to give him the all-important information which she has just withheld from don manuel. such is the device, of convenient silence at critical points where speech would be natural but ruinous, by which schiller leads up to his climax. there is no other play of his, early or late, the entanglement of which is so palpably artificial; so like a child's house of cards, built up with bated breath lest a breath should topple it over. according to böttiger, schiller once took note of what some critic had remarked upon this lavish use of silence in 'the bride of messina' and expressed surprise that any one could so misconceive him. he went on to say, if we can trust böttiger, that it is 'precisely in this closing of the mouth at critical moments, when a saving word might rend the iron net of fate, that the unevadable and demonic power of evil-brooding destiny manifests itself most clearly and sends a gruesome shudder of awe through every spectator.' this is certainly a good defense if we assume that the great object of dramatic poetry is to exhibit the working-out of some abstract scheme of mysterious fate. under that hypothesis one has no right to complain if the characters are treated like puppets,--pulled hither and thither in unnatural directions and made to speak when they should be silent, and to be silent when they should speak. if one finds the scheme impressive, one will think of that, get his thrill of awe and be thankful. but it is somewhat different if one holds that the verities of human nature are more interesting than any scheme, and that the great object of the serious drama should be to exhibit human beings in the stress of life. one who takes that view will wish, while recognizing the great qualities of 'the bride of messina', that its author had not gone quite so far in his contempt of realism. for, after all, the highest law of the drama is the law of psychological truth, which requires that the characters be humanly conceivable and act as human beings would act under the circumstances imagined. this law is not kept in 'the bride of messina', with the result that the first three acts fall short of the effect that they are intended to produce. it is different with the fourth act. there everything is in order, and the simple and noble impressiveness of the tragedy leaves nothing to be desired. and it is an interesting fact that this impressiveness depends only in a slight degree upon the fulfillment of the old dreams and prophecies. to be sure they are fulfilled; but we are not required to put faith in the inspiration either of the arab soothsayer or of the christian monk. their vaticinations might be mere fallible guess-work; don cesar might live and give them the lie, so far as any external constraint is concerned. but he himself _feels_ that the heavy hand of fate is upon him and that continued life would be intolerable. the whole pathos of the tragedy is transferred to the inner being of the surviving brother, and one feels that his self-destruction proceeds from the law of his own nature, and not from any fatalistic necessity that is laid upon him. the truth would seem to be that the fate-idea, while of course it must be taken into consideration in any careful estimate of 'the bride of messina', has been made a little too prominent by many of the critics. what the spectator sees, says one writer who is in the main an admirable expounder of schiller, is "gigantic fate striding over the stage. he sees a wild, tyrannical race, burdened with ancestral guilt, turning against its own flesh and blood.... he is made to feel that the self-destruction of this race is nothing accidental, that it is a divine visitation, a judgment of eternal justice pronounced against usurpation and lawlessness, that it means the birth of a new spiritual order out of doom and death."[127] but is this what is actually seen? is it not rather true that schiller makes but little out of the matter of ancestral guilt? we hear, it is true, that the old prince was of an alien stock that had won the sovereignty of messina with the sword and held it by force. but this is no very appalling crime as the world goes, and especially as the world went in the middle ages. one hardly thinks of william of normandy, for example, as a revolting criminal deserving of the divine wrath. then we hear, too, that the old prince had appropriated to himself a wife who was 'his father's choice'. but the whole matter is disposed of in two or three choral lines which leave not even a clear, much less a strong impression. there are no data for an ethical judgment. we are not told wherein the superior right of the father consisted. for aught we know the son may have had the better claim, and the father's curse may have been only the impotent scolding of a disappointed dotard. it is difficult to see anything here which can rationally warrant eternal justice in extirpating the race. and when we pass from the presuppositions to the play itself, we see that none of the characters except don cesar does anything seriously blameworthy. if then it were clearly the central purpose of schiller to justify the moral government of the world, or to exhibit the workings of an august fate in itself worthy of reverence, we should have to admit that he has missed the mark; for the fate that he represents is not worthy of reverence at all. but what is the central fact of the play, as seen by the unsophisticated spectator who has never read the greek poets nor heard of the house of labdacus? evidently it is the murder expiated by a voluntary death. a high-minded youth knowingly kills his brother in a moment of blind rage, because he thinks that his brother has deceived him. when he learns the truth, and learns also of the old dreams and prophecies, he feels that he too must die. here is the real tragedy,--in the resolution of don cesar and his steadfast adherence to it in the face of his mother's and his sister's entreaties. the apparatus of dreams and prophecies and fate is meant to work upon the mind of don cesar rather than upon that of the spectator. superstition adds to the burden of his remorse until it becomes unbearable and death appears the only road to peace: dying i bring to naught the ancient curse, a free death only breaks the chain of fate, in a prefatory essay upon 'the use of the chorus in tragedy' schiller defended his innovation and incidentally set his heel upon the head of the serpent of naturalism. true art, he insisted, must have a higher aim than to produce an illusion of the actual. its object is not to divert men with a momentary dream of freedom, but to make them truly free by awakening and developing the power of imaginative objectivation. nature itself being only an idea of the mind, and not something that appears to the senses, art must be ideal in order to represent the reality of nature. to demand upon the stage an illusion of the actual is absurd, since dramatic art rests entirely upon ideal conventions of one kind or another. therefore, so the argument goes on, it was well when a poetic diction was substituted for the prose of every-day life, and the next great step is to reintroduce the chorus and thereby 'declare war openly and honestly against naturalism in art'. the chorus is likened to a 'living wall which tragedy builds about itself in order completely to shut out the actual world and to preserve for itself its ideal domain, its poetic freedom'. in consonance with these ideas we have a chorus divided into two parts, one consisting of the elderly retainers of don manuel, the other of the younger retainers of don cesar. these two semi-choruses take a certain part in the action. on the one hand they are like the materialized shadows of their respective leaders, having no will of their own. when the brothers compose their feud and embrace each other, the semi-choruses do likewise,--which comes perilously near to the ridiculous. on the other hand the semi-choruses have a horizon of their own and perform, to a certain extent, the old function of the ideal spectator. they comment in sonorous strains upon present, past and future, and upon the high matters of life and death and fate. schiller's argument on the use of the chorus, while interesting in its way, does not now sound very convincing; perhaps because we have come to have less faith than he had in the possibility of settling such questions by abstract reasoning. forms of art spring out of local and temporal conditions; they have their exits and their entrances. now and then a reversion to some earlier form may prove acceptable, but in general it can have only a curious or antiquarian interest. the man of reading, who knows his greek poets, will be glad to have seen once or twice in his life a genuine greek play,--preferably in the greek language, with all the accessories as perfect as possible. next to that he will enjoy a perfect imitation, like the first portion of goethe's 'helena'. but just in proportion as he is permeated by the greek spirit he will feel the spuriousness of schiller's so-called chorus. for the effect of the greek chorus depended not so much upon the meaning of the words as upon the sensuous charm of the music and the dance. to sacrifice these is to sacrifice that which is most vital and leave only the simulacrum of a chorus. some small effects in the line of the picturesque can be achieved by means of costuming, marching and grouping, but the rest can be nothing but elocution,--a frosty appeal to the ethical sense, offered as a surrogate for the witchery of song and rhythmic motion. one may be pardoned for thinking that a good ballet would have served the purpose better. the reader of the play, however, is not disturbed by any considerations of this kind. for him the choruses are simply poetry,--admirable poetry, for the most part, in schiller's very best vein. what a wealth of imagery and what a splendor of varying rhythms! and how cunningly the gorgeous diction twines itself, like ivy about a bare wall, concealing the nakedness of commonplace and giving an effect of noble sententious wisdom! this is and must remain the great value of 'the bride of messina',--to delight the reader with the charm of its style. schiller's plea for the chorus passed unheeded save by the philologists. his example was not imitated; indeed he himself probably had no serious hope that it would be. on the other hand, there did spring up in the next two decades a most luxuriant crop of so-called fate-tragedies, which, with their horrors, banalities and puerilities, soon brought the species into contempt and made it fair game for the telling satire of platen. the fashion,--a thoroughly bad fashion in the main,--was undoubtedly set by 'the bride of messina'; but we cannot make schiller answerable for the hair-raising and blood-curdling inventions of werner, houwald, müllner, grillparzer and heine. footnotes: [footnote 127: kuno francke, "social forces in german literature," page 394.] chapter xx william tell der alte urstand der natur kehrt wieder, wo mensch dem menschen gegenübersteht; zum letzten mittel, wenn kein andres mehr verfangen will, ist ihm das schwert gegeben. _'william tell'_. schiller's last play, like his first, was inspired by the goddess of freedom, but what a difference between the wild-eyed bacchante of the earlier day and the decorous muse of 'william tell'! there the frenzied revolt of a young idealist against chimerical wrongs of the social order; here a handful of farmers, rising sanely in the might of union and appealing to the old order against intolerable oppression. there the tragedy of an individual madman; here the triumph of a laudable patriotism. 'tell' is a fresh illustration of its author's versatility, for nothing more different from its immediate predecessors could easily be imagined. it is also the most thoroughly human among his plays, and the only one that does not end upon a tragic note. finally it is the most popular, though the most loosely articulated,--a fact that shows how little the permanent interest and classical prestige of a dramatic production depend upon its satisfying the ideal demands of critical theory. it was noted casually in the preceding chapter that rumor began to be occupied with speculations about schiller's 'tell' before he had seriously thought of writing a play on the subject. in the summer of 1797 goethe had revisited switzerland and brought back with him the idea of a narrative poem about william tell. he discussed the matter with schiller, incidentally telling him much about the forest cantons. possibly he may have suggested, in the presence of a mutual friend, that the theme had dramatic possibilities,--which would account sufficiently for the aforesaid rumor. finding his supposed plan the subject of curious gossip, schiller was led to look more closely into the subject. he read tschudi's 'chronicon' and found it homeric and herodotean in its simple straightforwardness. the legend fascinated him and he began to see in it the material of a popular drama that should take the theatrical world by storm. he was eager for such a triumph, and the more so because 'the bride of messina', as staged by iffland in berlin, had met only with an equivocal success: many were pleased, but there was a plenty of adverse comment. iffland was now the director of the royal prussian theater, and thus in a position to serve the interests of schiller, whom he devotedly admired. it was therefore worth while for a man who had chosen to be a dramatic poet, and whose income depended upon his popularity, to forego further experimentation with unfamiliar art-forms and set about supplying that which would interest average human nature. work began in the spring of 1803 and proceeded very steadily during the ensuing months. the letters of the period express unbounded confidence in the nascent play. it was to be a 'powerful thing which should shake the theaters of germany', and a 'genuine folk-play for the entire public'. honest tschudi continued to be the great source, but other writers were read and excerpted. schiller took infinite pains with his local color, noting down from the books all sorts of minutiae that might aid his imagination. take for illustration the following jottings from fäsi and schleuchzer, two of his subsidiary authorities: there are mountains that consist entirely of ice--_firnen_; they shine like glass and get their isolated conical shape from the process of melting in the summer.--clouds form in the mountain-gorges and attach themselves to the rocks; herefrom prognostication of the weather.--view from on high when one stands above the clouds. the landscape seems to lie before one like a great lake, from which islands stand forth.--in the summer, cascades everywhere in the mountains.--chamois graze in flocks, the picket (_vorgeis_) piping in case of danger.--weather signs: swallows fly low, aquatic birds dive, sheep graze eagerly, dogs paw up the earth, fish leap from the water. 'the gray governor of the valley (_thalvogt_) is coming'; when this or that mountain puts on a cap, then drop the scythe and take the rake.--peculiarity of a certain lake that it draws to itself persons sleeping on its bank. a large amount of such conscientious note-taking, aided by a marvelous power of visualization, and supplemented also by what goethe could tell from personal observation, resulted in a remarkably vivid and accurate local color. a letter of schiller's written in december, 1803, tells of a purpose to go to switzerland before he should print his play. the plan was not carried out, but if it had been there would have been little to change; for 'william tell' reads throughout like the work of one thoroughly familiar with swiss character, topography and folk-lore. there is not a slip of any importance in the entire play. of course the conspiring farmers are idealized and their enemies are diabolized; but all this is so in the saga. schiller had to deal with a patriotic myth, and he made no attempt to go behind the romantic veil of tradition; his purpose being simply to present the poetic essence of the saga as handed down by tschudi. and he succeeded admirably. so far as the swiss people are concerned, he well deserves the memorial they have placed in his honor upon the mythenstein, near the legendary birth-place of their national independence. toward the close of the year 1803 came an interruption, weimar society being thrown into a flutter by the visit of madame de staël, now on her famous tour of inspection. it was of course fitting that schiller, as a local lion, should take his part in entertaining her; but the voluble lady was an _erscheinung_ new to his experience, and with his imperfect command of colloquial french he was hard put to it to bear up against the torrent of her conversation. he measured her very correctly at their first meeting, when they fell into an argument on the merits of the french drama. 'for what we call poetry', he wrote to goethe, 'she has no sense'; nevertheless he gave her full credit for her great qualities, in especial for a good sense amounting to genius. and she in turn was pleased with the serious german who argued with her in lame french, not as one caring to hold his own in a conversational fencing-match, but as one wishing to convince her of important truths in which he really believed. it must have been an interesting occasion in a small way, this first rencontre between schiller and the lady who was afterwards to speak of him so nobly and withal so justly in her celebrated book about germany. madame de staël's sojourn in weimar lasted some ten weeks, her portentous gift of speech becoming gradually more and more irksome to schiller and goethe. the social gayeties occasioned by her presence caused some retardation in the progress of 'william tell', but on february 18, 1804, it was completed, and two days later the final installment was despatched to the waiting iffland. how eagerly he was waiting may be inferred from the language used by him after perusal of the first act, which had been sent him a month earlier: i have read, devoured, bent my knee; and my heart, my tears, my rushing blood, have paid ecstatic homage to your spirit, to your heart. oh more! soon, soon, more! pages, scraps--whatever you can send! i tender hand and heart to your genius. what a work! what wealth, force, poetic beauty and irresistible power! god keep you! amen. these high-keyed expectations were not disappointed. the first performances of 'tell', in the spring of 1804, were received with prodigious enthusiasm, and ever since then it has been a prime favorite of the german stage. it has no characters that can be called great, as wallenstein is great, no complexity of plot, no thrilling surprises; and as for its psychology, a fairy tale could hardly be more simple. that which has endeared it to the germans is its picturesqueness and its passionate zeal for freedom. the theme of 'tell' is the successful revolt of the forest cantons against their governors. three actions that have no necessary connection with one another--the conspiracy of the cantons, the private feud of tell and gessler, and the love-affair of rudenz and bertha--are carried along together in such a way that all find their natural conclusion in the final celebration of victory. this feature of the play has often been criticized as impairing its unity; and certainly, from the conventional point of view the objection has some force. 'tell' is a play without a preponderating hero. we may say that it has three heroes, or rather five, since among the conspirators interest is pretty evenly distributed between stauffacher, melchthal and walther fürst. but in reality the hero is the swiss people considered as a unit. stauffacher and the other conspirators interest us as representatives of a suffering population. to portray the suffering and the termination of it through sturdy self-help is the central purpose of the play. this it is which gives it an essential unity, notwithstanding the three separate actions. the theme is an inspiring one, and the modern world owes schiller an immense debt for presenting it in austere simplicity, unincumbered with any dubious or disturbing philosophy. one cannot help loving so good a lover of freedom; for the sentiment does honor to human nature, notwithstanding some latter-day indications that it is going out of fashion. it may not be the highest and holiest of enthusiasms for the individual,--we give our best homage rather to self-surrender,--but if any political emotion is worthy of a lasting reverence, it is that one which attaches men to the motherland and leads them to stand together against an alien oppressor. sometimes it may be well, in god's long providence, that a weak or a backward people should be absorbed or ruled by a stronger power; but the sentiment which leads it to fight against absorption or subjugation is none the less admirable. and when the foreign domination is reckless and inhuman, standing for nothing but vindictive malice and the greed of empire; and when the victims of the misrule are strong in the simple virtues of the poor, we have the case in its most appealing aspect. this is the case that is presented in 'william tell',--the most notable drama in modern literature upon the theme of national resistance to foreign tyranny. its influence in germany as a classic of political freedom--during the napoleonic era and later, when it was a question of setting a limit to domestic absolutism--has been immense. and there is really no danger of its losing its potency; for it appeals to a sentiment which, while it may wax and wane with the movements of the _zeitgeist_, is now wrought into the heart-fiber of all the occidental nations, and not least of all--contrary to an opinion widely accepted in this country--of the germans. the uppermost thought of schiller, then, was to win sympathy for freedom and the rights of man; yet in 'william tell' we have nothing to do with any species of cloud-born idealism. the bearers of the message are not fantastic dreamers, like posa; they do not call themselves ambassadors of all mankind, or citizens of the centuries to come. they are a plain, practical folk, whose wishes do not fly far afield and who attempt nothing that they cannot carry through. they are not in the least given to fighting for the sake of fighting; on the contrary, the thought of bloodshed is abhorrent to them. all they wish is to be allowed to pursue their peaceful, partriarchal industries, as their fathers did before them, under laws of their own devising. but things have come to such a pass that their lives, their property and the honor of their women are not safe from the malice, cupidity and lust of their rulers. and even under such conditions the thought of a radical revolution does not occur to them: they do not rise against the overlordship of the emperor, but only against the brutal tyranny of the governors who disgrace him. their final triumph opens no other vista of change than that, in the future, another emperor will send them better governors. thus the upshot of the whole revolution is simply a provisional demonstration of stauffacher's proposition that 'tyrannical power has a limit'. this seems, at first, like a rather lame vindication of the sacred majesty of freedom, especially when we reflect that the whole question at issue is not a question of independence at all, but merely whether the cantons will give up their _reichsunmittelbarkeit_,--and with it certain old customs to which they are attached,--in order to become vassals of the house of hapsburg. were they willing to do that,--so it is said by rösselmann at the rütli meeting,--all their troubles would end forthwith; the cruel governors would deal kindly with them, would 'fondle' them. if this is so,--and other passages confirm the saying of the priest rösselmann,--then it is patent that the conduct of gessler is not the aimless brutality of a brute, but a policy deliberately pursued for the purpose of terrorizing the cantons into an acceptance of hapsburg overlordship. and this in turn throws its own light on the character of gessler. only a blockhead would try to gain such an end in such a way. this, however, is only another way of saying what has often been pointed out, that gessler is simply a fairy-tale tyrant, copied very closely from tschudi; a sort of typical bad man, whom the saga, after inventing him out of nothing, has made as black as possible in order the more clearly and strongly to justify the revolt. and yet, in the play, gessler never becomes entirely ridiculous; he does not seem a caricature of humanity,--perhaps because history teems with governors and viceroys who have exercised their little brief authority very much in his spirit, even if they have failed to commit his particular atrocities. these last considerations are meant to light up the fact that the effect of the play does not, after all, depend mainly upon its vindication of any political doctrine. we are nowhere in the region of abstractions. the sympathy that one feels for the insurgents is in no sort political, but purely human; it is of the same kind that one might feel for a community of hindu ryots in their efforts to rid themselves of a man-eating tiger. only in the play this sympathy is very much intensified by the picturesque lovableness of the afflicted population. it is here, in the picture of land and people, that schiller's mature art, which had brought him to a sovereign mastery of stage effects, may be said to win its greatest triumph. one may describe his method, fairly if somewhat paradoxically, as that of romantic realism. what a masterpiece of exposition we have in the opening scenes! the beautiful lake, at precisely its most fascinating point; the fisher-boy, all careless of the great world, singing his pretty song of the smiling but treacherous water; the herdsman and the hunter, announcing themselves above on the rocks in characteristic songs, and then conversing for a moment about the weather and their employments; the sudden arrival of baumgarten with his tale of wrong and vengeance; the storm on the lake, and the hurried dialogue between the cautious fisherman and the stout-hearted tell, who 'does what he cannot help doing'; the building of the hateful zwing-uri; the death of the slater and bertha's curse; the grief and fury of young melchthal, and, finally, the solemn covenant for life and death of the three leaders,--what variety and animation are here, and what a wealth of realistic detail! and how perfectly convincing it all is,--not a false note anywhere, nor a note that is held too long! well might goethe characterize this exposition as 'a complete piece in itself and withal an excellent one'. the first act of 'tell' is one of the best first acts in all dramatic literature. it is quite true that the exposition seems to promise somewhat more than is afterwards fulfilled. one who is familiar with schiller's usual method naturally expects that something will come of the rescue of baumgarten; but nothing does come of it except to throw a side-light upon the general situation and to bring out the character of tell. again, one expects to see more of dame gertrud, the 'wise daughter of noble iberg'. one looks for her to reappear under circumstances that shall give her something important to do and shall put her sagacity and courage to the test. it is not the habit of schiller to introduce such weighty personages at the beginning of a play and then drop them. to understand him in this instance one has but to remember that his hero is always the swiss people. the stauffachers, as a shining example of thrift and virtue; their dignified and influential position in the community; their fine new house that has roused the venomous jealousy of gessler,--all this is part of the situation, and it is the situation that counts. and how superbly the picture is completed by the meeting at the rütli! such an old-fashioned parliament, held of necessity under the stars and in the darkness of night, but with all possible regard to the ancient forms, was not only a novel and a picturesque idea in itself, but it was the best device which could possibly be imagined for bringing sharply into view the whole character of the swiss, in its winsome, patriarchal simplicity. here again, however, we have a radical departure from schiller's usual method; for what is actually done at this seemingly important meeting is, after all, in itself rather insignificant, and without direct influence upon the subsequent course of events. the conspirators decide to do nothing immediately, but to wait for a favorable opportunity during the christmas season, some seven or eight weeks ahead. this determination obviously involves a halt in the dramatic action, so far as the conspiracy is concerned. in dealing with this difficulty, schiller departs from his ordinary method of concentration and allows himself to be guided by the epical character of tschudi's narrative. the result is that we have, somewhat as in goethe's 'götz von berlichingen', a succession of dramatic pictures, rather than a drama bound together by a severe logic. in the third and fourth acts we hear no more of the conspirators,--aside from some expressions of regret for the delay,--and attention is concentrated upon tell, who has hitherto taken no part except to rescue baumgarten and to refuse his coöperation at the rütli, on the ground that he is not the man for a confab, and that 'the strong man is mightiest alone'. the character of tell, as depicted by schiller, has been the subject of much criticism, the strictures relating more particularly to his shooting the apple from his son's head, and then to his subsequent assassination of gessler. there is an oft-quoted opinion of bismarck, which may be quoted again, since it expresses so well a thought that has no doubt occurred, some time or other, to most readers and spectators of the play. busch makes bismarck say, under date of october 25, 1870: it would have been more natural and more noble, according to my ideas, if, instead of shooting at the boy, whom the best of archers might hit instead of the apple, he had killed the governor on the spot. that would have been righteous wrath at a cruel demand. i do not like his hiding and lurking; that does not befit a hero--not even a bushwhacker. undoubtedly such conduct as is here suggested for tell would be more 'heroic', in accordance with, our conventional ideas of heroism. and the thing would have been dramatically feasible. we can imagine tell, for example, as making sham preparations to shoot at the apple and then suddenly sending his arrow through the heart of his enemy; and we can also imagine a further management of the scene such that tell should escape with his boy. thus everything would be accomplished on the public square at altorf, in full face of the enemy, which is subsequently accomplished from the secure ambush by the 'hollow way' near küssnacht. such conduct would have been 'heroic', but the obvious objection to it is that it would have destroyed the very heart of the saga, which it was not for schiller to make over but to render dramatically plausible. it may be urged, perhaps, that a poet who had made joan of arc die in glory on the battle-field need not have been so punctilious in following the exact line of tschudi's story. but the cases are not exactly parallel. there the alternative was a scene of unmitigated and revolting horror, which would have destroyed the effect of the tragedy; here it was simply a question of _when_ gessler should be killed with an arrow. to make tell do just what the saga makes him do, and do it without forfeiting sympathy, was a delicate problem, which may well have fascinated schiller, who is surely the last man in the world to be accused of holding tame views as to 'heroism'. at any rate he must have felt that a tell who should not shoot at the apple and hit it would be simply no tell at all. one who looks closely at the famous scene will not fail to see that it is very cleverly constructed and that every objection which has been urged against it is really met in the text. in the first place, tell is not, and was never meant for, a hero of the conventional sort. there is no element of quixotry about him. he is a plain man, of limited horizon and small gift of speech. public affairs do not particularly interest him. he is a hardy mountaineer, with a strong trust in his own strength and resourcefulness; a good oarsman and a great shot with the crossbow; but he makes no fuss about these things. let it be repeated that he is not foolhardy. the dangers of the mountain, which bulk so large in the imagination of his wife, are simply the familiar element of the life that he loves. he treats her timorous apprehensions with the good-natured coolness of a man who knows how to take care of himself. he is affectionate, but not a bit sentimental. all this makes an eminently natural and consistent character. now what must such a character do when required, under penalty of death, by a brutal tyrant whose power is absolute, to hit an apple on his son's head? naturally his first thought is of the child, and he tries to escape by offering his own life. the reply is that he must shoot or die _with_ his child. thus there is no recourse; to refuse to shoot at all is worse than to shoot and miss. if he kill gessler on the spot,--and we must suppose that the thought occurs to him,--he will expose not only himself but his child and his wife and children at home to the fury of the troopers. the only safety lies in making a successful shot. and after all tell knows that he _can_ make it; it is only a question of nerve, and he has the nerve if he can only find it. and here comes in an important touch which is not in tschudi--the fearless confidence of walther tell in his father's marksmanship. the effect of this is to touch the pride of the bowman, to clear his eye, and to steady his hand. it is also a familiar fact that, with strong natures, a terrible danger, with just one chance of escape, may produce a moment of perfect self-control while the chance is taken. the whole scene, in addition to its effectiveness on the stage, is psychologically true to life. with all deference to the great qualities of the first chancellor of the german empire, one must insist that schiller was a better playwright than he and found precisely the best solution to his dramatic problem. and so of the later scene in the 'hollow way'; there is nothing wrong with it, unless it be the great length of the soliloquy. the killing of an enemy from an ambush, without giving him a chance for his life, is of course somewhat repugnant to our ideas of chivalry. we think of it instinctively as the deed of a savage, and not of a man with a pure heart and a good cause. but it must be remembered that such ideas are themselves conventional, and that we have in 'tell' a reversion to primitive conditions in which 'man stands over against man'. gessler has forfeited all right to chivalrous treatment, and tell is no knight engaged in fighting out a gentleman's feud. what is he to do? for himself, perhaps, he might take the chances of a fugitive in the mountains, but he cannot leave his wife and children exposed to gessler's vengeful malice. there is no law to which he can appeal, the only law of the land being gessler's will. in such a situation, clearly, there is no place for refined and chivalrous compunctions, or for ethical hair-splitting. tell does what he must do. he is in the position of a man protecting his family from a savage or a dangerous beast, and is not called upon to risk his own life needlessly. every reader of the old saga instinctively justifies him. his conduct is not noble or heroic, but natural and right. if this is so, however, there would seem to be no pressing need of his long soliloquy. he being _ex proposito_ a man of few words, his sudden volubility is a little surprising, though it should be duly noticed that the soliloquy is not a self-defense. there is no casuistry in it. tell does not argue the case with himself, like one in doubt about the rightness of his conduct. that is as clear as day to him, and he never wavers for a moment. but he has time to think while waiting, and his soliloquy is only his thinking made audible. delivered with even a slight excess of declamatory fervor, the lines are ridiculously out of keeping with tell's character; but they can be spoken so as to seem at least tolerably natural,--as natural, perhaps, as any soliloquy. and this is true, let it be remarked in passing, of many and many a passage in schiller. to some extent, very certainly, his reputation as a rhetorician is due to the histrionic spouting of lines that do not need to be spouted. to some extent, but not entirely: for even in 'tell' his old fondness for absurdly extravagant forms of expression sometimes reasserted itself. thus what can one make of a plain fisherman who talks in this wise about a rainstorm? rage on, ye winds! flame down, ye lightning-bolts! burst open, clouds! pour out, ye drenching streams of heaven, and drown the land! annihilate i' the very germ the unborn brood of men! ye furious elements, assert your lordship! ye bears, ye ancient wolves o' the wilderness, come back again! the land belongs to you. who cares to live in it bereft of freedom! the most serious blemish in 'william tell' is the introduction of johannes parricida in the fifth act,--an idea which goethe attributed to feminine influence of some sort.[128] the effect of it is to convert the rugged, manly tell of the preceding acts into a sanctimonious pharisee with whom one can have little sympathy. no doubt there is a moral difference between his act and that of parricida, but it is a difference which one does not wish to hear tell himself dilate upon. seeing that the murdered emperor was solely responsible for the brutal governors and thus indirectly for all the woes of switzerland; and seeing, too, that his death is the only guarantee we have at the end that the killing of gessler will do any good, and not simply have the effect to bring down upon the land, including tell and his family, the vengeance of some still more fiendish successor,--considering all this, one would rather not hear those horrified ejaculations of tell about the pollution of the murderer's presence. they may produce a certain stagy effect of contrast, but the effect was not worth producing at the expense of tell's character. as for the love-story in 'william tell', it is hardly of sufficient weight to merit extended discussion. both bertha and rudenz are rather tamely and conventionally drawn, to meet the need of a pair of romantic lovers; they evidently cost their creator no very strenuous communings with the genius of art. their private affair of the heart has nothing to do with the tell episode and is but loosely related to the popular uprising. their absence would not be very seriously felt in the drama, save that one would not like to miss attinghausen as a picturesque representative of the old patriarchal nobility. the two scenes in which he appears are in themselves admirable. footnotes: [footnote 128: see eckermann's "gespräche", under date of march 16, 1831. what goethe there says, however, is in flat contradiction of the following passage contained in a letter of schiller to iffland, written april 14, 1804: "auch goethe ist mit mir überzeugt, dasz ohne jenen monolog und ohne die persönliche erscheinung des parricida der tell sich gar nicht hätte denken lassen."] chapter xxi the end.--unfinished plays, translations and adaptations es stürzt ihn mitten in der bahn, es reiszt ihn fort vom vollen leben. _'william tell'_. our story of schiller's life draws to a close. after the completion of 'william tell' his tireless energy of production found its next theme in the story of dmitri, the reputed son of ivan the terrible. just how and whence the suggestion came to him is unknown, but the connection of things is patent enough in a general way. far-reaching intrigues in high life had always had a fascination for him, and recent studies undertaken for 'warbeck' had interested him in the type of the pretender whose kingly bearing seems to betoken kingly blood. in a work upon russia,--a land which had been brought closer to the schiller household by the appointment of wilhelm von wolzogen as weimarian envoy to the czar,--he read anew the history of the 'false dmitri', and was struck by its dramatic capabilities. in 'warbeck' he had thought to portray a pretender who knew that his claims were fraudulent; in dmitri he found one who believed in himself. the psychological problem, and the idea of conquering an entirely new territory for the german drama, attracted him strongly, and he set about the laborious task of self-orientation. ere long, however, there came an interruption which, for a while, seemed to promise a momentous change in the tenor of his life. iffland wished to lure him to berlin and had intimated that the prussian government might be disposed to offer inducements. schiller was not entirely averse to the idea; at least he thought it worth while to reconnoitre. so, toward the end of april, 1804, he set out with wife and children for the prussian capital, where he was received with the greatest cordiality. the king and queen of prussia, to whom he was presented, were very gracious, and it was all decidedly pleasant. so at least he thought and so his wife pretended to think,--keeping down for her husband's sake the dismay which a daughter of fair thuringia could not help feeling at the thought of making a home on the flat banks of the spree. after a fortnight schiller returned to weimar and was presently invited by the prussian minister, beyme, to name his terms. now came the rub; for he did not really wish to leave weimar. he had taken deep root there and his affections clung to the place for the sake of goethe and a few other friends. on the other hand, his stipend was but four hundred thalers, and his other sources of income were by no means such as to free him from anxiety about the future of his family. feeling that it was his duty to better his position if possible, he laid his case before karl august, who promptly doubled his stipend. after this it was virtually impossible for him to leave weimar. unwilling nevertheless to renounce the berlin prospects altogether, he wrote to beyme that for a consideration of two thousand thalers annually he would reside a few months of each year in berlin. to this proposition beyme made no answer. possibly he thought the price too high for a fractional poet. pending these futile negotiations schiller worked with great zest upon 'demetrius ',--reading, excerpting, examining maps and pictures, schematizing, balancing possibilities, and so forth. but again he was interrupted; first by an unusually severe illness, which brought him to death's door and left him for weeks in a condition of helpless languor, and then by the distractions incident to the arrival of the hereditary prince of weimar with his russian bride, maria paulovna. golden reports had preceded this princess, who was expected to reach weimar in november, and preparations were made to welcome her with distinguished honors. for some reason goethe, in his capacity of director of the theater, remained inactive amid the general flutter until a few days before the great event, when he besought schiller to come to the rescue. the result was 'the homage of the arts', called by its author a 'prologue'. we have a rustic scene in which country-folk plant an orange-tree and invoke the blessing of pagan divinities. the genius of art appears, and with him the seven goddesses: architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, music, dance and drama. genius asks for an explanation of the tree-planting, and is told by the rustics that it is an act of homage to their new queen, who has come from high imperial halls to live in their humble valley. they wish to bind her to them by keeping her reminded of home. on hearing this genius assures them that the queen will not find all things strange in her new home: old friends are there after all. then he leads forward his seven goddesses, who explain themselves and say pretty things about russia. 'the homage of the arts' is in no sense a weighty production, but its graceful verse and well-turned compliments had the desired effect. maria paulovna was pleased with it. the reaction from these russophile festivities fell heavily upon schiller and he became gradually weaker. unequal to creative effort he undertook a translation of racine's 'phèdre' in german pentameters and finished it about the middle of january, 1805. after this he threw himself with great energy upon 'demetrius', but it was the final flicker of a dying flame. in february came a fresh prostration, and it was then evident that the end was near. nevertheless he worked on for a few weeks longer with feverish eagerness. on the evening of april 29, he went to the theater. after the play was over, the young voss,--a son of the poet, who had attached himself warmly to schiller during these latest years,--came to him to attend him home. he found him in a violent fever, which soon led to exhaustion and delirium. this time the strong will of the sufferer and the eager offices of wife and physician proved unavailing. he lingered on a few days longer, now and then in his delirium reciting disconnected verse or scraps of latin, until the end came, on the afternoon of the 9th of may. three days later, between twelve and one o'clock at night, the body of the dead man was borne by a little group of friends through the silent and deserted streets of weimar, and lowered into a vault in the churchyard of st. james. there it remained until 1826, when the remains were exhumed and, after some curious vicissitudes, were placed in an oaken coffin and deposited in the ducal mausoleum, where they now rest near those of goethe and karl august.[129] the death of schiller made many mourners. goethe, who had himself been very ill, wrote to a friend in berlin: 'i thought to lose myself, and now i lose a friend, and with him the half of my existence.' from every hand came tokens of sympathy for the widow. maria paulovna asked for the privilege of caring for the children. queen luise of prussia sent a message of heartfelt condolence. cotta, whose business relations with schiller had given rise to a warm personal affection, made generous offers of financial aid. as for the nation at large, however, it can hardly be said that much notice was taken of the event. schiller had led a secluded life, had been but little in the public eye, and his personality was known to but few. what should the passing of a single dreamer signify in the stirring epoch of austerlitz and jena? not many knew that one of the real immortals had ceased to breathe,--one whose figure would loom up larger and larger in receding time, like a high mountain in the receding distance. but leaving this subject, of schiller's subsequent influence and reputation, for discussion in the concluding chapter, let us now turn to a brief survey of his unfinished plays and of his more important work as translator and adapter. and first, 'demetrius', of which one may say, as schiller said of the faust-fragment of 1790, that it is the torso of a hercules. such extant portions as had reached something like a final form in verse tell of a tragedy that bade fair to rank with 'wallenstein', perhaps to surpass 'wallenstein', in dramatic power and psychological interest. the completed portions pertain mainly to the first two acts; for the rest we have an immense mass of schemes, arguments, excerpts and collectanea. to read through this material, particularly the various schemes laboriously written out in numberless revisions, conveys at first an impression of over-solicitude, as if erudition and logical analysis were being relied upon to take the place of slackening inspiration. the moment one turns to the finished scenes, however, one sees that the poetic spring was still flowing in full measure; and one is amazed at the creative power which could still, with death knocking at the door, so swiftly and so surely fashion great poetry out of dull and contradictory books. the story of the false demetrius had been familiar to schiller from his youth, but there is no evidence that he ever thought of dramatizing it until the year 1802, when we hear of an intended drama to be called 'the massacre at moscow'. just as before in the cases of fiesco and wallenstein, he found here a notable conspirator whose character and motives were the subject of dispute among the historians. the more usual view was that demetrius was an escaped monk who gave himself out as the son of ivan the terrible, having either himself invented the fraud or else taken upon himself a rôle that was suggested to him by some one else. on the other hand, there were those who regarded him as the genuine son of ivan and thus entitled to the throne which he conquered from the usurper, boris gudunoff, in the year 1605. fraudulent pretender, or genuine czar of the blood of rurik,--this was the great question. with a fine dramatic intuition schiller conceived a third possibility, namely, that demetrius, though not in reality ivan's son, fully believed himself to be such until he had triumphed, and then, though undeceived, went on his calamitous way as a tyrant because he could not turn back. his first thought was to begin with a scene at sambor in galicia, wherein the escaped monk grischka, tarrying at the house of mnischek in complete ignorance of his high birth, but given none the less to ambitious dreaming, should be made known as ivan's son, demetrius, supposed to have been murdered sixteen years before at the instigation of boris. several scenes, interesting in their way but somewhat lacking in horizon, were elaborated in accordance with this idea. then, however, the plan was modified and it was decided to begin directly with a session of the polish parliament at cracow, at which demetrius should appear and triumphantly assert his claims before king sigismund and the assembled nobles. this scene, though left imperfect here and there, is certainly one of the best that ever came from schiller's pen. as usual we have a bit of world-drama, for the element out of which the action grows is the national antipathy of poles and russians. and what an interesting figure is the young demetrius, confronting all the pomp and power with the easy dignity of one born to kingship, and carrying the parliament with him by dint of his own self-confidence and royal bearing. he is essentially a new creation, unlike any of schiller's other youthful heroes, though a certain family resemblance is of course discernible. ambition of power is the great mainspring of his character, and he is as unscrupulous as napoleon. nevertheless he has his sentimental and his ethical promptings, and the whole basis of his conduct in this first part of the play is his perfect confidence that he is the son of ivan. it is thus ever to be regretted that schiller did not live to write the later scenes in which demetrius, on the eve of his triumphant entry into moscow, should be approached by the _fabricator doli_ and told the true story of his vulgar birth. here, just as in the 'oedipus rex', was a stupendous tragic fate, unconnected with any conscious guilt and growing entirely out of the circumstances. what should demetrius do? what he was to _say_ we know from a prose sketch which runs as follows: you [addressed to the _fabricator doli_, who appears in the manuscript as x] have pierced the heart of my life, you have taken from me my faith in myself. away, courage and hope! away, joyous self-confidence! i am caught in a lie. i am at variance with myself. i am an enemy of mankind. i and truth are parted forever! what? shall i undeceive the people? unmask myself as a deceiver?--i must go forward. i must stand firm, and yet i can do it no longer in the strength of inward conviction. murder and blood must maintain me in my position. how shall i meet the czarina? how shall i enter moscow amid the plaudits of the people, with this lie in my heart? one sees from this whither schiller's idea was tending. from the time that demetrius is undeceived his character changes. the youth who, with truth on his side, had it in him to become a great and wise ruler, breaks with the moral law and becomes a macbeth, or a richard the third. his course from this time on is flecked with blood and dishonored by treachery and tyranny. as czar he excites the hatred of the russians by his impolitic contempt of their customs. his poles are insolent and trouble begins to brew about him. finally there is an uprising against him and he falls--the victim of his own [greek: hubris]. had schiller been permitted by fate to complete 'demetrius', we should have had, it is safe to say, the most impressive of all his heroes, with the possible exception of wallenstein. and we should have had also, in all probability, the very best of his historical tragedies; for his plan had provided for an unusually large number of highly promising scenes. the picturesque polish parliament, with its tumultuous ending; the first meeting of demetrius with his reputed mother; the scene with the _fabricator doli_; the triumphal entry into moscow; demetrius as czar in the kremlin; his love intrigues with axinia and his perfunctory marriage to marina; the final gathering and bursting of the storm of indignation,--all this would have been wrought into a dramatic masterpiece of the first order. like 'demetrius' in having a royal pretender for a hero, but unlike it in every other respect, is the play which was to have been called 'warbeck'. to this subject schiller's attention was drawn in the summer of 1799, while reading english history in rapin de thoyras. during the ensuing years he took it up repeatedly, but each time dropped it in favor of some other theme. at the time of his death he left 'warbeck' material sufficient to make eighty-four pages of octavo print. the most of this material consists of prose schemes, but there are also several hundred verses, some of them complete, others with lacunae, great or small. by a close study of these data one can make out the general character of the proposed play and the essential lineaments of the more important characters. the play was not to have been a tragedy, and it would have owed to history hardly anything more than its _milieu_ and a few names. the plan was something like this: about the year 1492 there turns up at brussels, at the court of margaret, duchess of burgundy, a young man calling himself warbeck. he is ignorant of his own birth, and does not suppose himself to be of royal blood, but he has a strong resemblance to edward the fourth of england. being herself of york blood and wishing to make trouble for the tudor king, henry the seventh, margaret persuades the stranger to pretend that he is the son of edward the fourth,--one of the two boys supposed to have been murdered in the tower by richard of gloucester. he consents to the fraud and speedily acquires a following as pretender to the english throne. in reality margaret despises him and merely wishes to use him as a tool, but it soon appears that warbeck is a man of character who insists on playing his assumed rôle in a manner worthy of an english sovereign. preparations are made for an invasion of england to assert his claim. meanwhile warbeck falls in love with adelaide, a princess of brittany, for whom the imperious margaret has other designs. presently a man named simnel appears, asserting fraudulently that _he_ is a son of the fourth edward. he and warbeck fight a duel and simnel is killed. then the real edward plantagenet appears, with a convincing story of his own wonderful escape from the executioner in the tower. a murderous plot is concocted against the boy's life, but he is saved by warbeck, who acknowledges him as his rightful king. all this time warbeck has supposed himself to be acting a part of pure fraud; and as he is really a man of honor, and in love with an amiable princess, the rôle of deceit has become increasingly hateful to him. at last, however, the old earl of kildare arrives, and from the depths of his superior knowledge makes it plain that warbeck is in truth a natural son of edward the fourth. thus all ends romantically and we have no adumbration of that later scene of the year 1499, when perkin warbeck was drawn and quartered at tyburn. from this plan it is clear that the principal stress was to fall on the character of warbeck, conceived as a high-minded youth entangled in an odious lie. to quote schiller's exact words: 'the problem of the piece is to carry him (warbeck) ever deeper into situations in which his deceit brings him to despair, and to let his natural truthfulness increase as the circumstances force him to deception.' to arouse sympathy for such a character would have been, to say the least, a difficult task; one cannot wonder that schiller was perplexed by it. the schemes indicate that his main reliance was the love-story, which would have been very prominent. of the other characters, the most important, probably, was the duchess margaret, conceived as a selfish, overbearing, heartless creature, in sharp contrast with the romantic adelaide. on the whole, judging from such imperfect data as we possess, one must regard 'warbeck' as a far less powerful and promising design than 'demetrius'. contemporaneous with 'warbeck' and 'demetrius', and broadly similar to them in that it was to deal with a political adventurer and to present an elaborate picture of intrigue in high life, is the plan of a play which was at first called 'count königsmark'. the subject occupied the thoughts of schiller for some little time in the summer of 1804, until it was dropped in favor of 'demetrius'. count königsmark was a nobleman who was murdered in the year 1694, at the court of duke george i., of hannover, in consequence of a supposed criminal relation with the duchess sophia, a princess of the house of celle. as he mused upon the dramatic possibilities of the story, schiller became less interested in königsmark and more in the compromised duchess; so the name of the piece was changed to 'the princess of celle'. from his extant notes and sketches one can make out that the heroine was conceived, like mary stuart, as a noble sufferer. she is a virtuous lady who is given in marriage for political reasons to an unloved and licentious duke, whose mistresses insult her. in her misery she makes a friend of the chivalrous but inflammable königsmark. their relation excites suspicion, königsmark is murdered and the duchess sent to prison,--disgraced but innocent. in prison she finds peace of soul, just as mary stuart finds it in the presence of death. much older than any of these plans and entirely different from them, is that of the 'knights of malta', which dates back to the year 1788. while pursuing his studies for 'don carlos' schiller had become greatly interested in the story of la valette's heroic defense of malta in 1565. it seemed to him to promise well for a tragedy in the greek style,--with a chorus, a simple plot and few characters. he began work upon it, but was soon diverted by his historical studies. in subsequent years, however, he returned to 'the knights of malta' from time to time, and as late as 1803 was strongly minded to attempt the completion of the work. during these fifteen years the plan underwent various changes. although certain aspects of the subject made it very attractive to schiller, he felt from the first that it lacked the 'salient point' of a good tragedy. the extant data show him working tentatively with one idea after another, without ever finding exactly what he wanted. this being so, it is hardly worth while to go minutely into the history of his plans and perplexities. 'the knights of malta' was to have been a poetic tragedy of heroic devotion, friendship and self-sacrifice. the exposition, as we have it in outline, shows,--partly by means of a chorus of 'spiritual' knights,--the desperate plight of the besieged christians. the crisis requires absolute devotion to the principles of the order, but the knights have degenerated. two of them are quarreling over a captured greek girl, and so forth. la valette, the grandmaster, institutes stern measures of reform to restore the ancient _morale_ of the order, and these provoke intrigue and opposition. the defenders of fort st. elmo ask to be relieved, on the ground that the place cannot be held. la valette decides that st. elmo must be defended to the last: it is a case where a few must be ready to sacrifice themselves for their principles and for the order as a whole. among those thus sent to death is la valette's own son, who leaves behind a very dear friend. in the end the defenders of st. elmo are killed, but malta and the order are saved. the turks raise the siege. reading this outline one has no great difficulty in seeing why schiller's dramatic instinct could never be satisfied with 'the knights of malta'. it has no tragic climax, no point upon which the action could be focused. as a stage-play it would have had small chance of favor, on account of its chorus and its entire lack of female characters. romantic love was to be left out and friendship to take its place. but could anything worth while have been done with the heroics of friendship after 'don carlos'? on the whole one must regard it as a great good fortune for the german drama that, when schiller was hesitating in 1796 between 'wallenstein' and 'the knights of malta', the former carried the day. as for the pseudo-antique chorus, the best that he could do with that, by way of an experiment, was done later in 'the bride of messina'. besides those already mentioned, there are a number of other plans which deserve a word, were it only to show the wide range of schiller's interest and the eagerness of his quest after variety. thus we find him occupied, at one time or another, with two antique themes, 'aggripina' and 'the death of themistocles'; with an anglo-saxon theme of the tenth century, 'elfride', and with a medieval romantic theme, 'the countess of flanders'. then we find two subjects that were suggested by the reading of modern travels, 'the ship' and 'the filibuster'. in one the scene was to be laid on some distant coast or island, and the plot was to illustrate sea-life and commerce, with their characteristic types. in the other the whole action was to take place on shipboard, bringing in a mutiny, ship's justice, a sea-fight, trade with savages, and so forth. finally there are sketches of two other plays, based on the annals of crime. in one of them, called 'the children of the house', the hero was to be a thorough scoundrel, whom nemesis would impel mysteriously to a course of conduct whereby his long hidden crimes would be discovered. the other, entitled 'the police', was to present a story of crime and its discovery at paris,--with telling realistic pictures for which schiller took a mass of interesting notes. verily, a rich collection, which shows that a good deal of schiller failed to find expression in the works he completed. one could wish particularly that we had those sea-plays, and the parisian criminal drama. perhaps in that case the critics who have taxed him with this or that narrowness would have found it more difficult to make headway. we turn now from these dramatic might-have-beens to glance at the translations and adaptations made for the weimar theater.[130] and first it should be observed that in all these, without exception, schiller's point of view was that of a practical playwright, not that of a literary virtuoso. his concern was to enrich the repertory of the theater with good acting plays; plays which, when put upon the boards, would 'go', and go with such actors and such properties as were to be had. in his efforts to do this he was never restrained by any feeling of piety toward his originals from making such changes as commended themselves to his dramaturgic principles or instinct. the first work of this kind undertaken by him at weimar was a version of goethe's 'egmont', made in 1796. iffland was starring in weimar and wished to appear as egmont. goethe was just then somewhat lukewarm toward the theater, and even if he had not been, it was by no means hidden from him that his own strength lay in the poetic rather than the dramatic sphere. so it was arranged that schiller, as a man of experience, should operate upon the play that he had reviewed so candidly some years before. his procedure was 'consistent but cruel', as goethe afterward phrased it. he dropped the rôle of margaret of parma entirely, rearranged here and there in order to avoid a too frequent change of scene, and made a multitude of little changes in the interest of stage effect. as to the propriety of these alterations it is futile to argue on general grounds, since so much depends on the point of view, and the point of view has changed. to-day people who go to the theater to see 'egmont' prefer to see the play, for better or worse, as goethe wrote it. piety toward the author counts more than abstract principles. for a while schiller's version of 'egmont' had a certain vogue in the german theaters, but it soon gave way to an increasing preference for the original. goethe himself was pleased when this tendency manifested itself. similar considerations apply to the version of lessing's 'nathan', which was made in 1801. strangely enough, as it seems to us now, lessing's masterpiece had up to that time met with no favor on the german stage. it was not so much that people objected to its philosophic drift as that something seemed to be lacking in its dramatic quality. very naturally goethe and schiller, who were strongly in sympathy with lessing's tendency, were desirous of domesticating 'nathan' on the weimar boards. so schiller undertook an adaptation, taking the task very seriously. years before, while following up the theory of the drama in his strict and strenuous fashion, he had convinced himself that 'nathan' was a monstrosity; it was neither tragedy nor comedy nor tragi-comedy, and he was opposed to a mixture of types. in tragedy, so he had reasoned in his essay upon 'naïve and sentimental poetry', _raisonnement_ is out of place; in comedy, pathos. lessing had yielded to the 'whim' of mixing the two. if, therefore, it was desired to make an acceptable stage-play out of 'nathan' it would be advisable to modify it in the direction of tragedy by reducing its _raisonnement_, or else to make it more like comedy by reducing its pathos. in other words, theory had given schiller a point of view which is not the modern point of view. to-day no one, unless it were a pedant, would be disposed to criticize lessing, because, toward the end of his days, out of the fullness of his heart and following the impulse that was in him, he for once threw his own theories to the winds and wrote a dramatic masterpiece of its own peculiar kind. the very fact that it is unique is for us a part of its merit. but now, as was pointed out in a preceding chapter, the effect of schiller's occupation with the drama at weimar was to weaken his reverence for theory and to convince him of the importance of 'keeping the type-idea flexible in one's mind'. so when he came to adapt 'nathan' for the stage he proceeded much less radically than one might expect from his previous utterances. the tendency of the play was left intact, but many changes were made in the interest of brevity, simplicity and rapidity of movement. to these no one can seriously object, since lessing's text is too long for an evening in the theater, as the matter was regarded in those pre-wagnerian days. not so readily to be approved are certain other changes which amount to a retouching of some of the portraits with which schiller was dissatisfied,--notably that of the sultan saladin. of much greater interest than either of these adaptations is that of 'macbeth', which was made in january and february, 1800. this particular tragedy of shakspere had always been a favorite with schiller, and its influence is discernible in some of his plays, especially in 'wallenstein'. it was only natural, therefore, at a time when goethe and schiller were reaching out in every direction for the enrichment of their theatrical repertory, that the staging of 'macbeth' should appear as a consummation devoutly to be wished. there were already german versions which had been used at various theaters, but they were wretched travesties of shakspere. in setting out to make a new and better one, schiller took as the basis of his operations the translations of wieland and of eschenburg, following now the one and now the other. when he was half through with his labor he procured the english text and used it thereafter as a corrective. he added, subtracted and rearranged at will, and converted shakspere's prose into verse. the result is a decidedly schilleresque 'macbeth', the merit of which has been debated to this day. the romanticists, with a. w. schlegel at their head, were disgusted with it and did not hide their emotions. others have defended it through thick and thin. the questions involved are too far-reaching to be discussed here, but it may at least be remarked that there is no ground for a severely unfavorable judgment of schiller's work. it is in no sense a translation and is not to be judged as a literary performance at all, but as a stage-play. as such it served its purpose very well; it made shakspere acceptable at weimar in the only way then possible under the circumstances. and it helped bring shakspere into favor elsewhere. the schillerized 'macbeth' may be regarded as a sort of necessary transition-stage between the gross travesties of an earlier time and the more faithful presentations that were to come. with respect to 'turandot' a few words must suffice. this again grew out of the laudable desire of the duumvirs to acclimate in weimar dramatic productions that had pleased the public in other climes. gozzi's so-called _fiabe_ belonged to this class. they had had a great though short-lived vogue at venice, and this had led to a german translation in prose by a man named werthes. what schiller did was to turn the prose of werthes into pentameters of the style that he had made peculiarly his own. he seems not to have looked at the italian text at all, and indeed it could have been of little use to him. as one would expect, he made an attempt to give some poetic weight to the fantastic trifle, but it was a thankless undertaking, albeit good italian critics have praised his 'turandot' as far superior to the original. the comic-opera subject, for such it really is, was not adapted to schiller's vein. his 'turandot' is distinctly stiff and operose. it had a short run at two or three theaters, where, as at weimar, it excited a small interest on account of the riddles and the chinese 'business', and then it was quietly consigned to the limbo of things that were. the remaining adaptations made by schiller were from the french, a language which he knew better than any other except his own. the duke of weimar, and with him a considerable portion of the weimar public, had retained from early education a strong predilection for the french drama, both in comedy and in the _haute tragédie_. it was thus a cause of joy in court circles when it became known, in the autumn of 1799, that goethe had so far overcome his early anti-gallic prejudices as to have undertaken a translation for the stage of voltaire's 'mahomet'. to this enterprise, however, he was moved not so much by any change of heart, or by poetic sympathy, as by a desire to improve the style of the weimar actors,--to teach them ideality and self-abnegation. with this purpose schiller was in hearty accord, as can be seen from his verses 'to goethe', written in january, 1800, in which he set forth his dramatic confession of faith. the frenchman, he declared with unction, could by no means serve them as a model; there must be no bringing back of the old fetters. the germans had advanced to a new era, and demanded now a faithful picture of nature. nevertheless their histrionic art was in a backward condition, lacking in ideality and distinction. wherefore the french tragedy was to be welcomed as a 'guide to the better'. it was to come 'like a departed spirit and purify the desecrated stage into a worthy seat of the ancient melpomene'. the result of this new _rapprochement_ was that schiller began to take a more lively interest in the french drama, and out of this interest grew presently his translations of two of picard's comedies, 'médiocre et rampant' and 'encore des ménechmes'. in both he took his task very lightly. picard's alexandrines, in 'médiocre et rampant', were converted into german prose, and the play was christened 'the parasite'. in the case of the other, renamed 'the nephew as uncle', the original was in prose and schiller merely made a free translation. these enterprises were little more than hackwork, which had its suitable reward of brief popularity. of an entirely different character is the version of racine's 'phèdre', which, as we have seen, was finished a few weeks before schiller's death. here we have for the first time what can properly be called a poetic translation. to a large extent schiller's version is a line-for-line rendering of the french alexandrines into german pentameters,--a thing by no means easy to do. 'phedra' is by far the best specimen we have of schiller's powers as a translator. footnotes: [footnote 129: in the year 1805 it was still usual at weimar to have the bodies of the dead borne to the grave in the night by hired workmen. on the death of schiller the burgomaster gave orders in accordance with the custom, and it was with some difficulty that friends of the dead man succeeded in displacing the guild on which the lot had fallen and securing for themselves the privilege of acting as bearers. while lying in the old churchyard the bones of schiller became commingled with others in the vault, so that the proper reassembling of his mortal framework, in the year 1826, was a matter of some perplexity. for a while the skull was exhibited in the court library, where it called forth goethe's well-known poem.] [footnote 130: for an excellent discussion of schiller's more important adaptations the reader is referred to a. köster, "schiller als dramaturg", berlin, 1891.] chapter xxii the verdict of posterity alles was der dichter geben kann ist seine individualität; diese musz also wert sein, vor welt und nachwelt aufgestellt zu werden.--_review of bürger, 1791_. rather more than in other countries it is the fashion in germany to regard literature under a national aspect, and to judge of writers not so much according to their power of titillating a fastidious literary taste as according to the degree in which they have entered into and affected the intellectual life of the people at large. looked at from this point of view, schiller well deserves the name of a national poet; indeed it would be hard to find another modern man who deserves it better. critics there have always been to find fault with this and that, yet he remains, after a century, the most truly popular of german poets; not the most admired by the literary class, or by the outside world, but the most beloved in his own country. most germans have a different feeling for schiller from that which they cherish for any other of their great writers. for this his idealized personality is largely responsible. he is habitually thought of as an exceptionally noble and lofty character; as a man more singly and more strenuously devoted than most men to those starry ideals of truth, beauty and freedom, to which in the abstract all acknowledge fealty. his memory was early invested with a sort of halo, as of secular sainthood, for which, when one soberly reviews the facts of his career, there seems at first but little warrant. many another man has been no less serious in his philosophizing, no less conscientious in his artistic performance. there is nothing heroic in the story of his life, unless it were his battle with disease; and this might have been managed more wisely, if not more bravely. and yet the halo is not altogether factitious. many who knew him in his later years have borne witness to his spiritualized expression and the fine dignity of his presence. he gave the impression of an eminent personage whose "soul was like a star and dwelt apart". withal he was a pattern of the homely virtues; an affectionate husband and father and a loyal friend. there was no dissonance between his life and his poetry. on hearing of his death, the sculptor dannecker wrote: the godlike man stands continually before my eyes, i will make him life-like. schiller must live in sculpture as a colossal form. i intend an apotheosis.... the king was lately in my studio, and when he saw schiller so large he said: 'zounds! but why so large?' i answered: 'majesty, schiller must be thus large; the suabian must make a monument to the suabian.' said the king: 'you must have been a good friend of his.' i answered: 'yes, majesty, from my youth up. i occupy myself with him daily, working at the colossal bust. it costs trouble, but it gives me joy, because the colossal image will make an indescribable impression.' but it was not only his friends who were thus affected by his personality. madame de staël said of him in her famous book on germany, which was published in 1813: schiller was as admirable for his virtues as for his talents. conscience was his muse.... he loved poetry, the dramatic art, history, literature, for their own sake. had he been resolved not to publish his works, he would have bestowed the same care upon them.... in his youth he had been guilty of some vagaries of fancy, but with the strength of manhood he acquired that exalted purity which springs from great thoughts. he never had anything to do with the vulgar feelings. he lived, spoke and acted as if bad people did not exist; and when he portrayed them in his works, it was with more exaggeration and less depth than if he had known them. the bad presented themselves to his mind as an obstacle, as a physical scourge. in this characterization, truth to tell, there is a considerable element of pure moonshine, as any one may convince himself who will read through schiller's letters, more especially those written during the lifetime of the _horen_. he had in him quite enough of the fighter and of the schemer, and it came out in human ways. moreover he wrote constantly for immediate publication, under the goad of strong necessity; what he might have done if this necessity had not existed, no man, or woman, can tell. still, madame de staël's portrait is highly interesting, as the first that went out to the world at large, and as evidence of the impression produced by schiller in his later years even upon those who were under no peculiar temptation to idealize him. much more influential in shaping the sentiment of posterity was goethe's magnificent 'epilogue', dating from the year 1815. in this poem the essential lineaments of schiller's character, as seen through the soothing but not yet obscuring vista of ten years by the wisest of those who knew him well, were fixed for all time. he was here described as one who had 'mounted to the highest heights, closely akin to all that we esteem'; and posterity was besought to give him that which life had denied. henceforth it was possible only for purblind partisanship to think otherwise than nobly of a man concerning whom a goethe could say such words as these: denn er war unser. mag das stolze wort den lauten schmerz gewaltig übertönen. er mochte sich bei uns im sichern port, nach wildem sturm, zum dauernden gewöhnen. indessen schritt sein geist gewaltig fort ins ewige des guten, wahren, schönen; und hinter ihm, in wesenlosem scheine, lag was uns alle bändigt, das gemeine.[131] nevertheless the purblind partisanship was already beginning its campaign, though less against schiller's character than against his art; and this campaign soon led to a terrific logomachy, which was destined to convulse the german empire of the air for something like two generations. the controversy related to the comparative merit of goethe and schiller as men and as poets. in general the romantic school was hostile to schiller, partly for private reasons that had very little to do with critical theories. in his famous 'lectures on dramatic art', originally delivered at vienna in 1808 and published a few years later, a.w. schlegel dealt briefly with schiller at the end of the course. what he said was not unmixed with just appreciation, but the lectures set a bad fashion in german criticism. modern poetry was identified with romantic poetry and shakspere was held up as _the_ romantic poet. not only his greatness, but his rubbish, his rodomontade, his quips and quibbles and buffoonery, were treated as if they belonged to a sacrosanct canon of dramatic art. from this the natural inference was that to be like shakspere was to be great, and that no other kind of greatness was possible for the romantic, or modern, poet. as for schiller, he was treated by schlegel with urbane condescension as a gifted playwright who had tried to imitate shakspere and met with but limited success. the early plays were dismissed with a mere cry of pain, and the later ones were discussed very briefly and perfunctorily with respect to purely formal matters. as already remarked, the lectures of schlegel were sufficiently urbane in tone and gave no foretaste of that bitterness with which he subsequently attacked schiller in some of his poems. what is here important to observe is that schlegel, and the other romanticists who took their cue from him, set the vogue of judging goethe and schiller according to their imagined resemblance to shakspere. certain catchwords and phrases, such as universality, objectivity, irony, and what not, were imported into the literature of discussion, and these concepts were used as absolute criteria by which to write goethe up and schiller down. this naturally provoked the many friends of schiller, and they replied by assailing goethe. his 'universality' was decried as a lamentable weakness: it meant lack of character, of principle, of patriotism. his pleasing form was only the seductive veil of immorality and pococurantism. and so the controversy raged, becoming at last, in some cases, mere blind fury. one who would like to get a vivid impression of the state of german criticism at this time, and of the extent to which partisanship could obfuscate the vision of an intelligent and well-meaning man, should read the third volume of wolfgang menzel's 'german literature', published in 1828. menzel's treatment of goethe is one long diatribe of misrepresentation, becoming at times a mere ululation of malignant hatred. schiller, on the other hand, is exalted to the skies as the peerless representative of all that is noble in human nature and in poetry. this fierce old battle of pen and ink, which was really a disgrace to german civilization, is still capable of affording, for the passionate fury and wrong-headedness of it, a modicum of amusement to the retrospective scholar of to-day. and it amused goethe, who as usual found the sane point of view. said he to eckermann, one day in the year 1825: 'these twenty years the public has been contending as to which is the greater, schiller or i; they ought rather to be glad that they have a brace of such fellows to quarrel about.' in all his talks with eckermann goethe remained steadfastly faithful to the memory of his friend, giving no comfort to those who were using his own name as a bludgeon wherewith to batter the prestige of schiller. 'schiller', said he, 'could do nothing that did not turn out greater than the best work of these moderns. yes, even when he cut his finger-nails he was greater than these gentlemen.' he freely criticized this and that in particular plays, observing that there was 'something violent' in schiller's methods; he even committed himself to the dubious conjecture that certain weak passages might be due to physical exhaustion or to the unwholesome stimulation of flagging energies. but the ever recurring burden of his discourse was--_er war ein prächtiger mensch_. the death of goethe, in 1832, brought to an end conspicuously the epoch of the weimarian poets. indeed it had ended virtually long before, but it was not until goethe too had become a memory that its significance was fully realized. the germans now saw, and the rest of the world saw too, that they had a classical literature which really counted. they began to speak of 'our classics', and to compare and contrast them with the newest literary manifestations. writers of every kind,--philosophers, literary critics and historians, poets, novelists, journalists, politicians and agitators,--had now to adjust themselves mentally to goethe and schiller and what they stood for, or were supposed to stand for. and so the river of literature, which in our day has become a great amazon, commenced flowing in a small, but steady and ever widening stream. hoffmeister's monumental biography of schiller, in five volumes, appeared between 1838 and 1842, and in the ensuing years there came a procession of less thorough biographers, writing more for the unlearned public. the criticism of him as a poet and a dramatist was still subordinated, in a large degree, to the consideration of him as the prophet of ideas which were to be examined with reference to their ethical and moral value, or to the degree of their applicability to then existing conditions. the period now under consideration is, roughly speaking, the period from the beginning of acute political agitation, about 1830, to the realization of national unity in 1871. during the first part of this era academic philosophy was still largely under the influence of hegel, but the reaction had set in and was destined to grow into a widespread distrust of all speculative philosophy. not to explain and justify the existing world by the arachnean method of spinning a _weltanschauung_ out of one's own interior, but to make the world different,--was the new watchword. it was widely felt that germans had speculated and theorized and dreamed too much; it was time to assert their strength in practical affairs. men's minds began to be engaged with questions of political reform and social regeneration. it was no longer the ideal, the good, the beautiful and the true, that pressed for consideration, but constitutional government, the freedom of the press, popular representation and, above all, german unity. but chaos seemed to reign in the intellectual sphere. young germany, so called, began a noisy agitation which had no definite goal in view, but was characterized by a fierce hostility to existing forms in church and state,--to princes, aristocrats, priests, christian marriage and conventional morality. and there were other agitations, doctrines, theories and tendencies innumerable. germany had become, to revive a comparison then much in vogue, an irresolute hamlet, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. talk, talk, everywhere, and nowhere the strong hand of constructive statesmanship. and so came the abortive revolution of 1848, with its ensuing disgusts, until finally the man of destiny appeared and conducted affairs, by way of sadowa and sedan, to the new german empire. now in that era of the doctrinaires, of the philosophical break-up and of seething political passions, it was but natural that those who thought of schiller at all thought not so much of the dramatic artist as of the prophet whose sentiments could be quoted for present edification or reproof. the men of the middle part of the century judged him generally from the partisan standpoint of their own political, philosophical and religious prejudices. this is true not only of the forgotten criticasters, but of the most famous, the most widely read and the most authoritative literary historians of the time, such as gervinus and vilmar. and in the domain of pure dramatic criticism, or what purported to be such, there was quite too much of that captious dogmatism which had come down from the romanticists and which had its origin, as we have seen, in the habit of regarding shakspere, not as the great dramatist of a nation and an epoch, but as _the_ universal modern poet, whose methods and peculiarities must be canonical for everybody.[132] instead of looking fairly and squarely at schiller's plays and endeavoring to understand and interpret them as the expression of the life of a past epoch, and of an artistic individuality which had its own right to be and to grow in its own way, the dogmatic critics treated him, in many cases, _de haut en bas_, as if they knew everything better than he. men who would have thought it a little absurd to assail mont blanc for not being chimborazo did not scruple to gird at schiller for not being something else than that which his nature made him. and so it was that the great dramatic poet of the nation, whose plays were daily proving their vitality in scores of theaters and were giving pleasure to millions of readers, was treated oftentimes with incredible severity by pompous rhadamanthine critics who did not see that they were thereby making themselves and their critical pretensions slightly ridiculous. of course this line of remark is not meant to imply that the works of anybody should have been regarded as above criticism because they were popular and had become classical. what is intended is simply to characterize a past critical epoch which, in dealing with imaginative literature, cared a little too much for abstract dogmas and theoretical standpoints; which, instead of trying to enter humanly into the spirit of an author and to judge him according to the nature of his intentions and his success in carrying them out, preferred to lay him on a bed of procrustes and hack at him with the axe of philosophy. literature, like language, goes on its way with very little tenderness for theories and dogmas. that which meets the needs of human nature lives and after a while its 'faults' are forgotten; or mayhap they come to be regarded as merits, and the rules are extended to include the new case. not to have seen this quite clearly enough was a weakness of the vigorous and rigorous german critics of half a century ago. and yet, some of them did see it dimly now and then. reference was made a moment ago to gervinus,--certainly one of the most learned, thoughtful and generally meritorious of german literary historians,--and it was implied that he too was affected by the bias of his age. it is thus a pleasure to quote a passage from him which shows him in a different light. it is from the fifth volume of his 'national-litteratur der deutschen', published in 1842: if one insists on condemning 'wallenstein' as a whole because one must reject the episode (of max and thekla), then one blinds oneself deliberately to great merits on account of small faults. the historical critic feels clearly here the disadvantage in which a living or recently deceased writer is placed, in comparison with an earlier one whose entire individuality has receded into the distance and is beyond the strife of the passions. soon after shakspere's death there was the same quarrel about him that we are having now about schiller. to-day that which was imputed to him as vice is so interblended with his virtues that it is regarded as trivial to waste a serious word upon it. so it may be one day with our poets; and then people will look at the faults in schiller's compositions from other points of view. we shall then manage to get along with what was done and accepted long ago, and content ourselves with explaining it; whereas now, at the beginning of its course, though we cannot unmake it, we think perhaps to prevent its acceptance and deprive it of immortality by rejecting it unexplained. here is certainly a highly interesting modern case of the fulfillment of prophecy. another phase of the schiller-question which was much discussed in the middle portion of the nineteenth century was his aesthetic idealism. while his plays carry one into the rushing currents of life, and while his ballads are poems of action, it was possible to extract from his 'letters on aesthetic education' and from some of his poems, notably 'the ideal and life', what seemed to be a message of aesthetic quietism; a message which appeared to say that the attainment of inward peace, freedom and harmony was the highest goal of human effort. naturally enough the individualism and aestheticism of the weimarian poets were not welcome doctrine to an excited generation that had caught a glimpse of an immense work to be done for the fatherland. the ever increasing pressure of social emotions made it seem a selfish and unmanly thing to be so concerned about one's own spiritual equipoise. this feeling finds frequent expression in the literature of the time; and so much was it harped on, and so feebly were the countervailing considerations presented, that many people, both in germany and outside of it, got into their heads a radically wrong conception of the weimarian dioscuri; a conception which quite forgot that both of them, all their lives long, were very strenuous workers, strongly possessed by the social sentiment. and even those who were too wise to be thus completely misled as to the significance and the value of the weimarian legacy could not help feeling that for the present, at least, it were better regarded as a dead issue. one can understand the sentiment with which gervinus closed his great history of the national literature: 'the rival contest of the arts is finished. now we should set before us the other mark, which no archer among us has yet hit, and see if peradventure apollo will grant us here too the renown that he did not refuse us there.' but while the critics and doctrinaires were contending thus variously about the merits of schiller, his name endeared itself more and more to the many who were chafing under the régime of princely absolutism and were longing for a freer germany. they idealized him as the poet of liberty,--chiefly, it would seem, on account of 'william tell', or, among radical and boisterous youth, on account of 'the robbers'; for the 'freedom' of his poems is a metaphysical rather than a political concept. in the year 1844 freiligrath committed himself definitively to the cause of 'the people', as he understood it, which proved to be the cause of the red republicans. in announcing his conversion he wrote a poem called 'good morning', the last stanza of which, done into rough english rime, runs thus: good morning then! behold a freeman here, walking henceforward in the people's ways; for with the people is the poet's sphere,- 'tis thus i read my schiller nowadays.[133] but he read him quite wrongly. for a much saner view of this question one should go back to honest eckermann, who reports goethe as saying to him in 1824: 'schiller, who, between ourselves, was much more of an aristocrat than i, has the remarkable fortune to count as a particular friend of the people.' this is exactly right. neither man had in him much of the stuff that tribunes of the people are made of, but schiller had less of it than goethe. his whole temper was that of an aristocrat. had he lived in the forties of the nineteenth century, we may be very sure that he would have scented a return of the french terror, and would have spoken, if at all, as an arch-conservative. and really there is but cold comfort in 'william tell' for those who, in the revolutionary epoch, were clamoring against princes as such. the play is in no sense anti-monarchical, nor is it either german or un-german, but simply human. as a curious illustration of the unreason that men could once be guilty of through their habit of regarding schiller as a political poet, it is worth while to quote a passage from vilmar, whose history of german literature enjoyed great popularity half a century ago. speaking of 'william tell', vilmar has this to say: for the rest it is remarkable that schiller's contemporaries and a large part of posterity looked upon 'tell' as a peculiarly german play, and that too in respect of its subject-matter. they conceived it as a glorification of german deeds and held it up to admiration as a sort of symbol of german sentiment, in opposition to the french policy of subjugation in 1806-1813; the fact being that tell's deed, as it appears in the saga and in schiller's drama, represents and glorifies the unfortunate and in part criminal detachment of switzerland from the german empire. napoleon was in those days the only one who saw this and expressed his amazement that germans could thus praise such a thoroughly anti-german play as a drama glorifying the german fatherland. it is sufficient to remark, if the matter were of any importance, that the swiss revolution, as portrayed by schiller, is not directed against the empire, but against the brutes sent out by the hapsburg dynasty in pursuance of a policy of dynastic aggrandizement. in numerous passages it is brought out that the very thing the conspirators are concerned about is to preserve their ancient _reichsunmittelbarkeit_. all that they wish is to get back and perpetuate the liberties they have until lately enjoyed _under the empire_. 'freedom' nowhere means 'independence', and there is no vista of independence at the end of the play. the year 1859 was marked by a prodigious ebullition of schiller enthusiasm. while the hundredth birthday of goethe had passed, ten years before, with but little notice, that of schiller was made the occasion of a demonstration the like of which the modern world has hardly seen made in honor of any other poet whatsoever. in every part of germany, and not in germany only but in austria, switzerland, england and the new world, the memory of schiller was honored in speech and song, in the unveiling of monuments, and in commemorative writings large and small. it was as if the entire german-speaking world, still dreaming the lately baffled dream of national unity, had turned to him as the noblest of the spiritual ties that bind germans together. in the mass of literature dating from that time of flood-tide in the veneration of schiller, one finds a good deal that is interesting in its own way, for one reason or another, but not very much that is highly valuable for illuminative criticism of schiller. the best of the biographies are those of palleske and scherr; of the minor tributes the famous address of jacob grimm in the berlin academy. the spirit of the time was not favorable to a calm, objective view, but it is in itself a fact of immense significance that a great and critical, doctrine-ridden and passion-distracted people should have united in honoring a poet as schiller was honored by the germans in the year 1859. a new epoch may be dated from about 1871,--the epoch of the historical critics and philologers. with the realization of national unity the vista of the past rapidly cleared up and new points of view were gained. it was as if a height had been won from which it was possible to see over the dust and smoke of the past three decades. the pride of the new-born nation now looked back with quickened interest to the great writers of the eighteenth century, but with the feeling that they had done enough for the glory of the fatherland in simply being great writers. it was time to see them as they were, without writing them up or down, according to their supposed attitude toward questions which were not their questions. it was in 1874 that herman grimm remarked, in a lecture at berlin, that henceforth there was to be a science called goethe. all the world knows how the prediction has been fulfilled. during the last two decades the science called goethe has marched bravely on, enlisting a small army of workers, creating a vast jungle of literature,--_selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte_,--and making friends and enemies. and the science called schiller is like unto it, only not quite so big. to attempt any sort of review or conspectus of all this alexandrian activity would be, for the purposes of this book, a futile undertaking; it would lead off into an interminable and dry bibliography, which in the end would convey little instruction as to schiller's real popularity. it would show that he is very extensively studied and commented on by the academic class, which in germany constitutes by itself an enormous public. it would also show that good judges, of apparently equal competence, still think very differently of the general merit of his art and are very differently affected by particular works. this is only to reiterate the familiar truth that literary criticism has not become, does not tend to become, an exact science. the feeling one has for poetry, or the effect produced upon one by a particular artistic individuality, is the result of a hundred subtle influences that combine to give each one of us his private form and range of susceptibility; and this susceptibility itself varies with the _zeitgeist_ and with the age and nerve-state of the individual. the mere craving for novelty makes itself felt; so that that which once gave pleasure gives it no longer, or gives it in a lower degree. there is disputing about tastes, but there is no settling of the dispute. for a to give logical reasons why b should admire that which, as a matter of fact, b does not admire, or vice versa, is always a tempting, and in the long run a useful, form of literary exertion; only one must not expect b to be convinced or to mend his ways immediately. beyond a doubt there have been strong influences at work in germany, during the past two decades, which are unfavorable to schiller's prestige. now and then some cocksure champion of some _nova fede_ announces that the day of poetic idealism is past. there have always been such voices, and a few years ago they were perhaps a little more numerous and more shrill than usual. of late, however, they have seemed to grow fainter, and there are already signs of the idealistic reaction that is sure to come. meanwhile the day of schiller does not pass and is not likely to pass. the isms come and go, but his plays retain their popularity, because they appeal to sentiments that are deeply rooted in the affections of an immense portion of the german people who care but little for the doctrines of the doctrinaire. and so it will continue to be. to talk of returning to schiller, or to hold up his style and technique as models for imitation, is foolish. of such imitation, which could lead to nothing but the ossification of the german drama, there has been quite enough in the past. to imitate his spirit is to 'keep the type-idea flexible in one's mind' and reach out continually after that which is new, elevating and adapted to the present need. this is the best form of respect to his memory. unquestionably schiller lacked the supreme qualities that go to the making of a great world-poet. with all his cosmopolitanism he was a german of the germans. for them his work has a meaning and an importance which it cannot have for others, because he is the organ-voice of their ethnic instincts and idealisms. think of a sentiment that germans love, and you shall find it, if you search, expressed in sonorous verse in some poem or play of schiller. the schools and the theaters keep his name steadily before the great public, while the intellectual classes, as gervinus foresaw, are coming to dwell less on the great qualities that he lacked than on the great qualities that he possessed. as to the present attitude of sober german thought, nothing could possibly be more illuminative than the following words of otto brahm: as a student i was a schiller-hater. i make this preliminary confession not because i attach personal importance to it, but because, on the contrary, i think i see in my attitude one that is typical for our time. every one of us, it seems to me, travels this road: after a period of early veneration, which is awakened in us by tradition and by the earliest literary impressions of youth, there comes, as a reaction against an uncritical overestimate, and under the influence of changed ideals of art, a defection from schiller, which parades itself in a one-sided and unhistorical emphasis of his weak points. then gradually this negative attitude corrects itself to a positive one, and we recognize the folly of that young-and-verdant bumptiousness which would think of consigning the greatest of german dramatists to the realms of the dead. and now at last, after it has passed through doubt, our enthusiasm is imperishable; with clear eye we look up to the greatness of the man, and to the splendid model for all intellectual work which is exhibited in that life of passionate striving for the ideal. footnotes: [footnote 131: the meaning of the famous verses, divested perforce of much of their german music, may be expressed thus: for he was ours. so let the note of pride hush into silence all the mourner's ruth; in our safe harbor he was fain to bide and build for aye, after the storm of youth. we saw his mighty spirit onward stride to eternal realms of beauty and of truth; while far behind him lay phantasmally the vulgar things that fetter you and me.] [footnote 132: the disparagement of schiller on account of his unlikeness to shakspere was carried to almost absurd lengths in the "shakespeare-studien" of otto ludwig. one of ludwig's critiques, written about 1858, begins thus: "ich kenne keine poetische, namentlich keine dramatische gestalt, die in ihrem entwurfe so zufällig, so krankhaft individuell, in ihrer ausführung so unwahr wäre, als schiller's wallenstein; keine, die mit ihren eignen voraussetzungen so im streite läge, keine, die sich molluskenhafter der willkür des dichters fügte."] [footnote 133: guten morgen denn! frei werd' ich stehen für das volk und mit ihm in der zeit; mit dem volke soll der dichter gehen,- so les' ich meinen schiller heut.] the end appendix a survey of schiller literature the mass of literature pertaining to schiller has now grown so great that an exhaustive bibliography would fill a good-sized volume. all that can be attempted here is a selection of the more important works. the fullest bibliography thus far is that contained in the fifth volume of goedeke's grundrisz zur geschichte der deutschen dichtung, 2nd edition, dresden, 1893. annual reviews of schiller literature appear in the jahresberichte für neuere deutsche litteraturgeschichte and in the berichte des freien deutschen hochstiftes. valuable especially for its english titles is the bibliography compiled by john p. anderson for nevinson's life of schiller, london, 1889. editions during the lifetime of schiller his writings were printed in different forms by different publishers, and owing to the absence of copyright unauthorized reprints were numerous. he himself undertook no complete and final redaction of all his works, though in his later years he revised and arranged a selection of his poems. 'don carlos' and some of the prose writings also underwent revision at the hands of their author. the first edition calling itself complete was that of körner, which was published in 1812-15, in twelve volumes, by cotta of stuttgart. körner divided the poems into three periods,--a division which has since been extensively copied. körner's edition became the basis of the later cotta editions (down to 1868), which were reprinted in various forms and degrees of completeness, but without important changes or additions. with the expiration of cotta's monopoly and the opening of the philological era, the works of schiller began to be deemed worthy of the same scrupulous editorial care that had long been bestowed on the greek and latin classics. the mid-century researches of hoffmeister and others, particularly hoffmeister's supplemente zu schillers werken, 1840-1, had brought to light much new material not usually printed with the works of schiller, and the received text, even of the more important works, was known to be more or less faulty and uncertain. to meet the new demand a historico-critical edition was undertaken by goedeke, with the assistance of several sub-editors. the result was schillers, sämmtliche schriften, historisch-kritische ausgabe, 15 vols., cotta, stuttgart, 1868-76. this edition aimed at completeness, arranged the works chronologically and went deeply into the matter of variant readings. it is still indispensable to the scholar, though not free from pedantries. contemporaneous with this work of critical scholarship was the cheaper and more popular edition of boxberger and maltzahn, published by hempel in berlin--schillers werke, nach den vorzüglichsten quellen revidierte ausgabe, 16 parts in 6 vols., 1868-74,--which, though unsightly, is valuable for its introductions and notes. in more recent years several good editions have appeared, the most noteworthy being (1) that of boxberger and birlinger, published as a part of kürschner's deutsche national-litteratur, 12 vols., stuttgart, 1882-91; (2) that of l. bellermann, kritisch durchgesehene und erläuterte ausgabe, 14 vols., leipzig, 1895 ff., and (3) the latest of the critical cotta editions, completed in 16 vols. in 1894. the dramatic fragments have been twice edited by kettner, schillers dramatischer nachlasz nach den handschriften herausgegeben, weimar, 1895, and schillers dramatische entwürfe und fragmente aus dem nachlasz zusammengestellt, stuttgart, 1899. the xenia have recently been edited by schmidt and suphan, xenien 1796, nach den handschriften des goethe-schiller archivs herausgegeben, weimar, 1893. as is well known the later plays of schiller, to a certain extent also some of his prose writings, are familiar school classics wherever german is studied. the school editions, many of them meritorious works of scholarship, are very numerous. they are not mentioned here because a mere list of names and dates would be of no use, while a selection with discriminative or critical comment would be a difficult and invidious task to which the compiler of this survey has no inclination. any of the scholarly editions published in recent years, in germany, the united states or england, will usually be found to contain a sufficient bibliography of the particular work under consideration. letters and memoirs it was the opinion of goethe that schiller's style was at its best in his letters (see eckermann's gespräche, 14. april, 1824). letters of schiller, including some forged ones to karl moser, began to get into print in the early years of the nineteenth century, and as interest increased the publications became exceedingly numerous (see the extensive bibliography in goedeke's grundrisz, v. 98 ff.). so far as the authentic letters of schiller himself are concerned, these separate publications have now been superseded by the admirable work of f. jonas, schillers briefe, kritische gesamtausgabe, 7 vols., stuttgart, 1892 ff. it only remains, therefore, to make note of the more important publications that contain correspondence, or reminiscences having a biographical value. they are as follows: briefwechsel zwischen schiller und goethe, mit einer einleitung von f. muncker, stuttgart, 1893. the correspondence is also to be had, edited by vollmer, in cotta's bibliothek der weltlitteratur. it was first published in 1828-9 in 6 vols. briefwechsel zwischen schiller und wilhelm von humboldt, dritte vermehrte ausgabe mit anmerkungen von a. leitzmann, stuttgart, 1900. first published in 1830, with a vorerinnerung by von humboldt. schillers briefwechsel mit körner, herausgegeben von k. goedeke, leipzig, 1874; also a later edition by l. geiger, stuttgart, 1893. the correspondence was first published in 1847 and soon after translated into english by simpson, 3 vols., london, 1849. schiller und lotte, dritte, den ganzen briefwechsel umfassende ausgabe, von w. fielitz, stuttgart, 1879; later edition, also by fielitz, 1893. first published in 1856. karl augusts erstes anknüpfen mit schiller, stuttgart, 1857, edited by schiller's daughter, emilie von gleichen. schillers beziehungen zu eltern, geschwistern und der familie von wolzogen, herausgegeben von a. von wolzogen, stuttgart, 1859. charlotte von schiller und ihre freunde, herausgegeben von l. urlichs, 3 vols., stuttgart, 1860-5. briefwechsel zwischen schiller and iffland, herausgegeben von f. dingelstedt, stuttgart, 1863. briefwechsel zwischen schiller und seiner schwester christophine, herausgegeben von w. von maltzahn, leipzig, 1875. schillers briefwechsel mit dem herzog von augustenburg, herausgegeben von max müller, berlin, 1875. geschäftsbriefe schillers, gesammelt, erläutert und herausgegeben von k. goedeke, leipzig, 1875. briefwechsel zwischen schiller und cotta, herausgegeben von w. vollmer, stuttgart, 1876. to these may be added--here better than elsewhere: charlotte von kalb und ihre beziehungen zu goethe und schiller, von e. köpke, berlin, 1843, and the diary, reminiscences and correspondence of henry crabbe robinson, edited by th. sadler, london, 1869. biography the first account of schiller by a conscientious and competent writer was that by körner, which accompanied his edition of 1812-15. this, however, was a mere sketch. in 1825 carlyle published his life of schiller at london, and a few years later the book was translated into german and supplied with an introduction by goethe. it was based on very imperfect information, but was an inspiring work of genius nevertheless. it is now more valuable as a carlyle document than as a schiller-document. in 1830 karoline von wolzogen, schiller's sister-in-law, published her memoir of the poet, which is now to be had in cotta's bibliothek der weltlitteratur. it contained a large number of authentic letters and was based upon an intimate personal acquaintance dating from the year 1787. for the earlier years data were furnished by friends and relatives. the little book has many excellencies, but the portrait of schiller, as it came from the hands of the talented but aging baroness, is a shade too idealistic and sentimental. of his virile youth one gets hardly an inkling. the year 1836 brought a valuable contribution to the knowledge of schiller's youth in schillers flucht von stuttgart, by andreas streicher. from this time on the biographies are numerous. a mediocre one by doering, first published in 1832, was often reprinted in subsequent years. between 1838 and 1842 appeared schillers leben, geistesentwickelung und werke im zusammenhang, von karl hoffmeister. this monumental work of scholarship, in five volumes, has been indispensable to later biographers, however they might differ with hoffmeister in matters of critical estimate. hoffmeister's learned work was made the basis of a more popular biography by h. viehoff, which appeared first in 1846. a new and revised edition was published in 1875. of the shorter and more popular biographies which appeared down to 1859, it may suffice to mention those by g. schwab (1840) and j.w. schäfer (1853). the sketch by bulwer, which accompanied his translation of schiller's poems, london, 1844, was based mainly on hoffmeister and schwab. the great schiller-festival of 1859 called forth a mass of literature of which the titles fill ten octavo pages in goedeke's grundrisz. of the longer biographies dating from this period the most important are that by j. scherr, schiller and seine zeit, leipzig, 1859 (english translation by elizabeth maclellan, philadelphia, 1881), and that by e. palleske, schillers leben und werke, berlin, 1858-9. palleske's work, of which an english translation by lady wallace appeared in london in 1860, soon attained a remarkable popularity, which it still enjoys with some abatement. it is the work of a conscientious schiller enthusiast, written with great warmth of feeling and great fulness of biographical detail, but not strong on the critical side. a twelfth edition, somewhat popularized by h. fischer, appeared in 1886, a fifteenth edition in 1900. for some twenty years palleske and scherr held the field in germany without serious competition, and then a new crop of biographies began to appear. that of h. düntzer, schillers leben, mit 46 illustrationen und 5 beilagen, leipzig, 1881 (english translation by pinkerton, london, 1883), retold the familiar story in a style less attractive than that of palleske, and without adding anything of great importance in the way of critical appreciation. the same may be said of the biography by c. hepp, leipzig, 1885. of an entirely different character are the contributions of weltrich, minor, and brahm, which are essentially works of historico-critical interpretation. unfortunately, however, they were begun on a scale of such magnitude, and with such an uncompromising respect for the infinitely little, that there is small prospect of their completion. of the work of weltrich, friedrich schiller, geschichte seines lebens und charakteristik seiner werke, unter kritischem nachweis der biographischen quellen, the first installment appeared in 1885, the second in 1891, and the third (completing the first volume) in 1899. the work of minor, schiller, sein leben und seine werke, of which two volumes appeared in 1890, ends with a discussion of 'don carlos'. more readable, but proportionally less thorough than either of these, is the work of brahm, of which the second volume, first part, appeared in 1892, bringing the story down through schiller's kantian period. the learnedly philological character of the works just mentioned, together with their incompleteness, left room enough for further attempts at a popular biography of schiller. this demand has been met in recent years by wychgram, whose well-written and handsomely illustrated schiller, leipzig, 1891, is worthy of high commendation; and also by the little book of harnack, berlin, 1898 (one of the 'geisteshelden' series), which is admirable within the limits set. of the short biographies in english the best are those of boyesen, goethe and schiller, new york, 1882, and sime, schiller, london, 1882. that of nevinson, london, 1889 (one of the 'great writers' series), contains, along with much sound criticism, a good deal that is rather too peremptory and unsympathetic. criticism the following notes take no account of criticism contained in the general histories of german literature and philosophy, nor of the multitudinous articles, essays, reviews, programs and dissertations relating to particular works. _plays_.--the best treatise on the plays as a whole is that of bellermann, schillers dramen, 2nd edition, 2 vols., berlin, 1898-9. bellermann's point of view is that of a learned dramatic critic and expounder. he writes as a warm admirer of schiller and is at his best when defending him against ill-grounded censures. occasionally his friendly partisanship carries him a little too far.--a good discussion from the dramatic and histrionic point of view is contained in bulthaupt, dramaturgie des schauspiels, 5th edition, oldenburg, 1891.--the studien zu schillers dramen, by w. fielitz, leipzig, 1876, are excellent, but relate only to 'wallenstein', 'maria stuart' and 'the maid of orleans'.--suggestive and eminently readable is werder, vorlesungen über wallenstein, berlin, 1889.--rather more valuable for facts than for criticism are the schiller volumes of düntzers erläuterungen zu den deutschen klassikern (beginning in 1876).--references to schiller are numerous in freytag, die technik des dramas (first edition in 1859), and also in the shakespeare-studien of otto ludwig (edited by heyderich, 1872).--on the work of schiller as translator and adapter consult a. köster, schiller als dramaturg, berlin, 1891.--an up-to-date french treatise on the early plays is that of kontz, les drames de la jeunesse de schiller, paris, 1899. _poems_.--viehoff, schillers gedichte erläutert, und auf ihre veranlassungen, quellen und vorbilder zurückgeführt, 7th edition, stuttgart, 1895.--hauff, schillerstudien, stuttgart, 1880.--philippi, schillers lyrische gedankendichtung in ihrem ideellen zusammenhange beleuchtet, augsburg, 1888.--helene lange, schillers philosophische gedichte, sechs vorträge, berlin, 1887.--schiller als lyrischer dichter in düntzers erläuterungen.--considerable commentary is contained in the poems and ballads of schiller translated by sir edward bulwer lytton, 1st edition, london, 1844.--on the xenia consult, in addition to the edition by schmidt and suphan, boas, schiller und goethe im xenienkampf, stuttgart, 1851. _historical writings_.--tomaschek, schiller in seinem verhältnisse zur wissenschaft; von der kaiserlichen akademie der wissenschaften zu wien gekrönte preisschrift, wien, 1862.--janssen, schiller als historiker, 2nd edition, freiburg, 1879.--ueberweg, schiller als historiker und philosoph, leipzig, 1884 (written, however, in 1859 in competition for the prize of the vienna academy, which was won by tomaschek). _philosophical writings._--harnack, die klassische aesthetik der deutschen, würdigung der kunsttheoretischen arbeiten schillers, goethes und ihrer freunde, leipzig, 1892.--berger, k. (pseudonym for adolf wechssler), die entwickelung von schillers aesthetik, weimar, 1894.--kühnemann, die kantischen studien schillers und die komposition des 'wallenstein', marburg, 1889.--gneisse, schillers lehre von der aesthetischen wahrnehmung, berlin, 1893. zimmermann, schiller als denker, 1859.--the works of tomaschek and ueberweg (see above under 'historical writings') deal also with schiller as a philosophic thinker. _miscellaneous._--fischer, schiller-schriften, heidelberg, 1891 (revised edition of earlier studies comprising schillers jugendund wanderjahre in selbstbekenntnissen, schiller als komiker, and schiller als philosoph).--belling, die metrik schillers, breslau, 1883.--rudolph, schiller-lexikon, erläuterndes wörterbuch zu schillers dichterwerken, 2 vols., berlin, 1890.--rieger, schillers verhältnis zur französischen revolution, wien, 1885.--pietsch, schiller als kritiker, königsberg, 1898.--mauerhof, schiller und heinrich von kleist, zürich und leipzig (no date).--ehrlich, goethe und schiller, berlin, 1897.--portig, schiller in seinem verhältnis zur freundschaft und liebe, sowie in seinem inneren verhältnis zu goethe, hamburg, 1894 (long-winded and amorphous, but useful in places). transcriber's notes: #################### this e-text is based on the 1899 edition of the book. minor punctuation errors have been tacitly corrected. inconsistent and uncommon spelling and hyphenation have been retained. words obviously missing a single letter have been tacitly corrected. italic text in the original book has been placed between underscores (_italic_); passages in small caps have been characterised by forward slashes (/small caps/). [oe] symbolises the corresponding ligature. the following passages have been corrected or need to be commented: # p. 24: "verlaszt": obsolete form of "verlaßt" # p. 61: "court-marshal": literal translation for "hofmarschall" (lord stewart) # p. 106: "voiec" --> "voice" # p. 111: "come, your majesty" --> "i come, your majesty" # p. 119: "may taken" --> "may be taken" # p. 285: "into the the room": doubled word removed. # p. 296: "after along" --> "after a long" # p. 308: "and taken up" --> "had taken up" # p. 319: "osberved" --> "observed" # p. 321: "countenanec" --> "countenance"; "opposite schiller's bed" --> "opposite goethe's bed" # p. 339: "wonderlich" --> "wunderlich" # p. 350: "signore" --> "signora" # p. 458: "than no soirée" --> "that no soirée" # p. 491: "charlotte's" --> "caroline's" # p. 493: "weningenjena" --> "wenigenjena" # footnote 42: "dante alighiere's" --> "dante alighieri's" # advertising pages: 2nd and 4th; 3rd and 5th page are identical in the original book --> 4th and 5th page deleted. [illustration: schiller in his attic.] goethe and schiller an historical romance by l. mühlbach author of joseph ii. and his court, frederick the great and his court, the empress josephine, andreas hofer, etc. translated from the german by chapman coleman new york d. appleton and company 1899 /copyright/, 1867, /by/ d. appleton and company. contents. book i. chapter page i. introduction, 1 ii. the trials of life, 10 iii. henrietta von wolzogen, 22 iv. joy and sorrow, 33 v. charlotte von kalb, 41 vi. the title, 59 vii. adieu to mannheim! 68 viii. plans for the future, 73 ix. the last ride, 85 book ii. i. after the king's death, 111 ii. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" 120 iii. the favorites, 129 iv. the maid of honor, 138 v. figaro, 143 vi. the alliance, 157 vii. the conditions, 173 viii. new love, 180 ix. the decision, 189 x. the invocation, 198 xi. the will, 214 xii. leuchsenring, 226 book iii. i. schiller in dresden, 236 ii. gilded poverty, 245 iii. marie von arnim, 252 iv. souls in purgatory, 268 v. separation, 283 vi. the song "to joy," 293 vii. together once more, 299 viii. goethe and moritz, 314 ix. leonora, 326 x. a dream of love, 340 xi. adieu to italy, 355 book iv. i. the return, 360 ii. reconciliation, 377 iii. grim death, 385 iv. goethe's return from rome, 394 v. estrangement, 404 vi. the two poets, 421 vii. the first meeting, 431 viii. wilhelmine rietz, 443 ix. husband and wife, 450 x. the attack, 460 xi. youth victorious, 470 xii. schiller's marriage, 482 illustrations. facing page schiller in his attic _frontispiece_ the dead king 116 portrait of schiller 236 portrait of goethe 315 goethe and schiller. book i. chapter i. introduction. the honest and peaceful inhabitants of mannheim, the capital of the palatinate, had long since retired to rest; the streets were deserted, and the houses wrapped in darkness. only high up in the little bow window of a corner house on the palace square still glimmered a faint light like the subdued gleam of a lamp in a sick-chamber. but the watch, who had just proclaimed at the corner in stentorian tones the third hour of the morning, knew better; and, as he entered the square, he again looked up at the illuminated window, gravely shaking his head. "mr. schiller has not yet gone to bed," said he to himself; "writing all night again, i suppose. but i will not stand it! did i not promise mr. streicher that i would always look up at his window, and, whenever i found the light burning after one o'clock, protest against it? well, then, i'll try it to-night, and keep my word, as an honest man should." and in stentorian tones the watchman cried out, "mr. schiller! halloo! mr. schiller!" for a moment the window was darkened by a shadow, and then opened, and a hoarse voice demanded, "who called? who called my name?" "i, mr. schiller. i, the watchman, fabian," roared the man in response. "and what do you desire of me, worthy guardian of the worthy city of mannheim?" "i wish to beg of you, mr. schiller, to be so good as to put out your light and go to bed." "what brought you to this strange and ridiculous idea?" exclaimed the voice from above, laughing loudly. "what does the light behind my windows concern you, a watchman and a guardian of the streets?" "really it doesn't concern me at all," cried the watchman. "i know that very well, but i have promised the music-teacher of my daughter, mr. streicher, to pay attention to your window, and every time i see the light burning in your room after one o'clock, to call you, and beg you in the name of your dear friend to be kind enough to put out your light and go to bed." "a very ridiculous idea of mr. streicher," said the voice of the invisible poet, laughingly, "and i am only surprised that you should do his bidding, and take this task upon yourself." "don't be surprised, sir, for i am not doing it gratis. mr. streicher told me that whenever i had called you, and begged you in his name to go to bed, i should have to pay only half-price for the next piano-lesson of my daughter; and i beg you, therefore, mr. schiller, to be good enough to tell mr. streicher to-morrow that i have done his bidding. and hereafter do as you please, sleep or wake. i have done my duty. good-night, mr. schiller." "good-night!" the poet rapidly closed the window, and drew the folds of the old threadbare coat which served him as a dressing-gown closer around his shivering form. "the good and true streicher," he murmured in a low voice, "is an honest soul, and means well, and does not know how he has injured me to-day! i was in the grandest flow of enthusiasm; all the discomforts and necessities of life had disappeared! i was no longer cold, there were no more tormenting creditors, no cares, and no pangs of love! i was in thy heaven, father zeus! and the messenger of my friend comes and calls me back to the cold, inhospitable earth. the fire of my enthusiasm is extinguished, and now i am sensible that there is no fire in the stove!" he raised his large blue eyes, and glanced through the dimly-lighted space toward the high black stove, within the open grate of which only a few glimmering coals were visible. "no fire," sighed schiller, shrugging his shoulders, "and no wood to make one. poor, feeble man! the fire of the soul does not suffice to warm thy shivering body, and the prose of life ever recalls thee from the elysian fields of poetry. but it shall have no power over me. i will defy it! forgive me, friend streicher, but i cannot do your bidding! your watchman calls to me to sleep, but don carlos calls to me to be wakeful! i cannot let the spanish prince call in vain! fortunately the coffee-pot is still standing in the stove. if it is yet warm, something can be done for the poor, shivering body." he rapidly went across the room to the stove, knelt down before the fire-place, drew the brown coffee-pot from its bed of ashes, raised it to his lips and refreshed himself with several long draughts, after which he carefully restored the vessel to its former place. truly a strange sight, this long, thin figure in the gray-yellow flannel gown, a pointed nightcap on his head, stooping before the stove and occupying himself with a coffee-pot! if the admirers of the tragic poet schiller could have seen him in this position, they would never have believed that the young man in this miserable apparel--the long, lean, angular figure, with the bony, homely face and yellow hair, loosed from the confinement of the queue, and falling in dishevelled masses over his sunken cheeks--that this man was the author of the three tragedies which for the last few years had filled all germany with astonishment, admiration, and terror. like the column of fire, harbinger of a new era, they towered on the grave of the old, licking the heavens with tongues of flame. about ten years before, goethe's "sufferings of young werther" had flooded germany with great enthusiasm. this wonderful book, half romance, half reality, had pierced the hearts of all like lightning--as if these hearts had been but tinder awaiting ignition and destruction at the touch of this eloquence, this passion of love, and revelling in destruction by such heavenly agents! in the impassioned and excited state of the public mind, goethe's "werner" had been received by the youth of germany--yes, of all europe--as a revelation of the spirit of the universe, as a proclaiming angel. on bended knees and in ecstatic devotion they listened to the heavenly voice which aroused their hearts from sleep with the holy sirocco of passion, and awakened them out of the tameness of prose to the passion and vehemence of poetry; to the blissful pain of unsatisfied longing and heaven-achieving love. and now, when the excited minds had hardly quieted down, when the dazzled eyes had hardly become accustomed to the heavenly effulgence shed upon them by "werther"--now, after scarcely ten years, another wonder occurred, another of the stormy, impassioned periods, of which klinger had been the father and creator, with his soul-stirring dramas, had given birth to a new genius, and a new light was diffused over germany. in the year 1774 goethe had published his romance, "sufferings of young werther." carried away with sympathy by his lofty enthusiasm, all germany--yes, all europe--applauded and hailed him as the wonderful poet who had embodied the sorrows and pangs which agitate the heart and soul of each individual, in a sublime symphony, in which every sigh and every thought of suffering, weeping, rejoicing, and exulting humanity, found expression. schiller's first tragedy, "the robbers," was produced upon the stage for the first time in 1782; and its effects and results were of the most vast and enduring character. goethe, with his "werner," had imbued all hearts with enthusiasm for love and feeling; schiller, with his "robbers," filled all hearts with yearnings after liberty and hatred of tyranny. the personal grandeur and freedom of man were idealized in the noble robber charles moor, and, not only was this magnanimous robber the hero of all young girls, but the hearts of all the young men were filled with abhorrence of and contempt for the tyrants who had compelled this high-minded man to flee to the bohemian forests and become a robber in order to escape the galling chains of subserviency to princes. enthusiasm for this champion of liberty, this robber, charles moor, at the same time imbued all with detestation of tyrants. the lion-rampant which was to be seen on the printed copies of "the robbers," and which bore the motto "_in tyrannos_," was only a representation of the german people, who, moved to the core by schiller's tragedy, and made conscious of the worth and dignity of man, asserted itself in its majesty against tyranny. "had i been present at the creation of the world as god," said a german prince at that time, "and had i foreseen that 'the robbers' would be written in this world, i would never have created it." in a german city where "the robbers" was produced on the stage, the performance had so powerful an effect on the minds of the youth, that twelve young men formed the plan of fleeing secretly from the houses of their parents to the bohemian forests, in order to make up a band of robbers. all the preparations had been made, and the twelve juvenile robbers had agreed to meet on the following night at a designated place outside the city gate; when one of the young heroes, in giving his mother a last good-night kiss, could no longer restrain his tears, and in this manner led to the discovery of the great secret and the prevention of the plan by the arrest of the youthful band of aspirants. as the german public was filled with rapture for the suicidal love-hero werther, it now worshipped the suicidal robber-hero charles moor: while love then excited its transports, liberty and the rights of humanity were now the objects of its enthusiasm. and the poet schiller added fuel to the flames of this enthusiasm. a new tragedy, the theme of which was liberty, "fiesco," soon followed his "robbers;" and the sensation which it caused was still to be surpassed by that excited throughout all germany by his third tragedy, "louise müllerin, or intrigues and love." this was, at the same time, an exaltation of noble love, and of the proud human heart, and a condemnation and denunciation of the established prejudices which arrogantly recognized nobility and gentle birth as conferring prerogatives and privileges. "the robbers," "fiesco," and "louise müllerin," these were the flaring torches of the revolution which in germany was to work out its ends in the minds of men, as it had done in a more material manner, in france, on their bodies. in france royalty and the nobility were conducted to the guillotine, in germany they were pilloried in public opinion by the prince and court marshal in "intrigues and love." goethe had given the german public the ideal of love--schiller gave them the ideal of liberty. and the poet of "the robbers" was as warmly enshrined in the heart of the german people as the poet of "werther" had been. but alas! the admiration and enthusiasm of the german public shows itself in words and praises, but not in deeds in material proofs. true, the germans give their poets a portion of their hearts, but not a portion of their fortune. schiller had given the germans his three tragedies; they had made their triumphal march over every stage in germany; but schiller had nevertheless remained the poor poet, whose only possession was the invisible laurel-wreath which adorned his noble brow, accorded him by the german people. his countless admirers saw him in their inspired thoughts with his youthful head entwined with laurel, and would, no doubt, have been horrified if they could have seen him in his dressing-gown, the nightcap pulled down over the laurel, stooping in front of his iron stove and endeavoring to rekindle the coals with his breath, in order that his coffee might be warmed a little. but it was a vain endeavor. the fire was almost out, the coals glowed but faintly, and the poet's breath was not strong enough to renew the flame. "all in vain," sighed schiller, replacing the coffee-pot on the ashes, with a disconsolate shrug of the shoulders; "where there is no fuel, there can be no fire." he slowly arose from his kneeling position, and, his hands folded behind his back, walked with rapid strides to and fro in his little chamber. the dimly-burning tallow-candle which stood on the table, covered with papers and books, flared up whenever he passed, and illuminated, for the moment, the large rugged figure and the pale countenance, with the high forehead and light-blue eyes. at first this countenance wore a gloomy, troubled look. but by degrees it assumed another expression; and soon the flaring light showed in this dingy little room the features of an inspired poet, with sparkling eyes, and an exulting smile. "yes," he exclaimed, in a loud voice, "yes, it shall be so! i will append this scene to the third act, and it must be the loftiest and grandest of the entire tragedy. not to prince carlos or to the queen shall posa proclaim his sublime ideas of liberty and his plans for the happiness of the people. no, he shall hurl them in the face of the tyrant, of king philip himself. with the lightning of his words he shall warm this rock of tyranny, and unseal the spring of inspiration in the breast of the man-despising, bigoted ruler, and make the waters of human love play joyfully! oh, ye eternal gods, give me words, fire my thoughts, and give wings to my inspiration, that i may be able to give expression, in a flow of rapture and poetry, to that which now fills my whole soul!" he rushed to his table and threw himself with such violence into his old stool that it groaned and cracked beneath him. but schiller paid no attention to this; his whole soul was in his work, his whole heart was filled with enthusiasm and delight. his hand flew over the paper, his smile brightened, his countenance became more radiant. at times he dictated to himself in a loud, energetic voice, the words which his flying pen conveyed to the paper, that they might henceforth to all eternity be indelibly imprinted in the hearts of his readers. but schiller was not thinking of his readers, nor of the possible effect of his words; he thought only of his work. there was no room in his soul but for poetry, for the sublime and lofty scene which he wished to add to his tragedy. "oh," he now exclaimed, his pen speeding like an arrow over the rustling paper, "oh, could the combined eloquence of all the thousands who are interested in this lofty hour, but tremble on my lips, to fan the spark which i feel into a flame! abandon this unnatural idolatry that destroys us. be our model of the eternal and the true, and--" a severe and painful cough interrupted the enraptured poet; he was compelled to discontinue his recitation; the pen faltered in his quivering hand; and from the sublime realms of the ideal, bodily pain recalled the poet to reality. he let fall the pen, the arrow which the gods had bestowed, to enable him to divide the clouds of prejudice and throw open to enraptured humanity the heaven of poetry,--he let fall the pen, and raised his hand to his trembling, panting breast. "how it pains, how it pricks!" he groaned. "is it not as if the tyrant philip had thrust his dagger into the breast of poor posa, in the anger of his offended majesty, and--" another attack of coughing silenced him, and resounded through the quiet solitary chamber. the sound struck upon his ear so dismally that he cast a hasty glance behind him into the gloomy space, as if looking for the ghost which had uttered such dreary tones. "if this continues, i am hardly repaid for having fled from my tyrannical duke," murmured schiller. "truly i had better have remained and served out my poor miserable existence as regimental surgeon, than cough my life out as a german, that is, as a hungry poet." but as he said this, his lips quivered, and self-reproach was depicted in his countenance. "be still," he exclaimed, "be still! shame upon you, schiller, for uttering such unmanly, cowardly words! you a poet, frederick schiller? you are not even a man! you aspire to ascend the heights of parnassus, and sink down disheartened and discouraged when an evil annoys you on the way, and admonishes you that you are only a man, a mortal who aspires to climb to the seat of the gods. if you are a poet, frederick schiller, remember that the gods are watching over you, and that they will not cruelly abandon you before the goal is half achieved. "no," he exclaimed in a loud voice, raising his head, and looking upward, "no, the gods will not abandon me! they will give me strength and health and a long life, that i may accomplish the task which my soul and mind and heart tell me is required at my hands. no, parnassus stands before me, and i will climb it!" his beaming eye glanced upward in ecstasy and saw not the low dusty ceiling, the want and indigence by which he was surrounded. he gazed into immensity; the low ceiling opened to his view, and through it "he saw the heavens and the countenance of the blessed!" a loud noise in the street awakened him from his trance. it was the watchman blowing his horn and calling the hour in stentorian tones. "four o'clock," murmured schiller, "the night approaches its end!--and my candle also," he continued, smiling, as he looked at the brass candlestick, from the upper rim of which the softened tallow was falling in heavy drops, while the wick had sunk down into the liquid mass. schiller shrugged his shoulders. "it appears that i must stop in the middle of my grand scene and go to bed. my good friend streicher has in vain begged me to do so, through his musical messenger of love; and now a tallow-candle compels me to do so! what poor, miserable beings we men are! a trifling, inanimate, material thing has more power over us than the spirit, and while we oppose the latter we must submit to be overcome by the former! therefore to bed, to bed! farewell, my posa! the poor human creature leaves you for a few hours, but the lofty human mind will soon return to you! good-night, my posa!" the wick of the miserable candle flared up once more and then expired with a crackling noise in the liquid tallow. "that is as it should be," laughed schiller; "the poet, like the mule, must be able to find his way in the dark on the verge of an abyss!" he groped his way through the little room to his bedchamber, and undressed himself rapidly; and the loud, regular breathing soon announced that the young poet, frederick schiller, was wrapped in health-giving and refreshing slumber. chapter ii. the trials of life. frederick schiller still slept, although the pale winter sun of december stood high in the heavens, and the streets of the little city of mannheim had long since awakened to new life and activity. frederick schiller still slept, and, worn out by his long vigils, his work, and his cough, might have slept on for a long time, had he not been aroused by a loud knocking at the door, and an audible step in the adjoining room. a young man stood on the threshold of the bedchamber and wished schiller a hearty good-morning. "i can account for this, fritz," said he, raising his finger threateningly--"not into bed at night, not out of bed in the morning! did i not send you my watchman as a love-messenger? but he has already complained to me that it was unavailing." "do not be angry, my andrew," exclaimed schiller, extending his hand to his friend with a cordial smile. "a poet must above all things wait upon the muses submissively, and may not show them the door when they pay him a visit at an unseemly hour of the night." "ah, the nine muses would have been satisfied if you had shown them out, and had graciously accorded them the privilege of knocking at your door again this morning! but get up, fritz! unfortunately, i have something of pressing and grave importance to communicate!" with one bound frederick schiller was out of his bed. "of pressing and grave importance," he repeated, dressing rapidly, "that sounds very mystical, andrew. and now that i look at you, i find that your usually open brow is clouded. it is no misfortune that you have to announce?" "no, fritz, no misfortune, thank god, but a very great annoyance. miserable, grovelling poverty once more stretches out its ravenous claws." "what is it?" asked schiller, breathlessly, as he drew the dressing-gown over his shoulders with trembling hands. "i am now composed and ready to hear all! some impatient creditor who wishes to throw me into prison. is it not so? speak it right out, andrew, without hesitation." "well, then, come with me into the other room. there you shall learn all," answered andrew streicher, taking his friend's hand and throwing the chamber door open, which he had closed behind him on his entrance. "come and see!" "mr. schwelm," exclaimed schiller, as he observed on crossing the threshold a gentleman standing in a window-niche, whose countenance indicated that he was very ill at ease. "yes, truly, this is my loved and faithful friend, oswald schwelm, from stuttgart, the literary godfather of my career as a poet, and--but how mournful you look, dear schwelm! and not a single word of friendship for me, no greeting?" "ah, schiller, these are hard times," sighed oswald schwelm. "anxiety and want have driven me from stuttgart, and i come to you as a right unwelcome guest. only believe that i deplore it deeply myself, but i cannot help it, and it is not my fault. i would gladly sacrifice every thing for my friend schiller, but i have nothing more; and painful necessity compels me to remind you of the old debt." "do not judge him harshly, schiller," said streicher, in a low voice. "poor schwelm's difficulties are of a very urgent nature. you know very well that at a time when no printer could be found to put your 'robbers' in press, schwelm guaranteed to the publisher in stuttgart the expense incurred in its publication, because he was convinced, as we all were, that the 'robbers' would make you a celebrated poet, and not only insure you a harvest of honor and renown, but also of money. now, unfortunately, the money has not yet been harvested, and poor oswald schwelm has had the additional misfortune of losing his capital by the failure of the commercial house in which it was deposited. since then the publisher has dunned him in an outrageous manner, and has even obtained a warrant for his arrest; and, in order to escape, schwelm fled from stuttgart and came here!" "forgive me, friend schwelm," said schiller, rushing forward and embracing the young merchant. "ah, my dear friends, it seems that you have mistaken me and my future; it seems that the lofty plans formed in our youthful days are not to be realized." "they have already been realized in part," said schwelm, gently. "you are a renowned poet; all germany admires and praises you! the 'robbers' has been given on every stage, and--" "and i have not even three hundred florins," interrupted schiller, sadly, "not even a paltry three hundred florins to meet the just demands of the friend who confided in and gave his bond for me, and who must now become involved in danger and difficulty on my account." "then you have not succeeded in getting the money together?" said streicher, mournfully. "i imparted to you two weeks ago the contents of the letter containing an anxious appeal for help, which schwelm had written to me, and you promised to procure the money. since then i disliked to speak of the matter again, because i knew you would surely leave no means untried to raise the amount." "and i have left no means untried," exclaimed schiller, with an angry gesture. "what can i do? no one is willing to lend or advance money on the pitiful capital of a poet's talent! the few florins which i have received for the representation of the 'robbers' and 'fiesco' have hardly sufficed to purchase the bare necessities of life; and when i begged the manager, mr. von dalberg, to advance me on 'louisa müllerin' at least three hundred florins, as he had determined to put it on the stage, he refused me, and i had the mortification of being turned off by this nobleman like a miserable begging writer." "and your father," said andrew schwelm, timidly. "did you not say that you would apply to your father, major schiller?" "i have done so," replied schiller, with a sigh. "i wrote urgently, representing my want and troubles, and begging him to have pity on his poor son, and to lend him a helping hand for this once. but it seems my words have not had power to touch his paternal heart, for until now i have in vain awaited a reply on every mail day. and it seems that the mail which comes from stuttgart to-day has brought me no letter, for i believe the hour at which letters are delivered has long since passed. i must therefore patiently wait another three days for a reply, and the next mail will perhaps condemn me to another trial of patience. oh, my friends, if you could see my heart, if you could estimate the pain this mortification causes me! for myself, i am ready to suffer want, to content myself with the bare necessities of life--yes, even to hunger and thirst, to attain the lofty ends to which i aspire. the path of a poet has ever been a thorny one, and poverty has always been the companion of poetry. this i am ready to bear. i do not crave riches; and even if the tempter should approach in this trying hour and offer me a million, but with the condition that i should forswear poetry, and write nothing more for the stage, i would reject the million with contempt, and a thousand times prefer to remain a poor poet than become a rich idler. but to see you, my friends, in trouble and suffering on my account, and powerless to relieve you, is truly bitter, and--" "the letter-carrier," exclaimed streicher joyfully, as, after a timid knock, the door was softly opened, and a man in the uniform of the thurn and taxis post-office officials entered the room. "a letter from ludwigsburg. ten kreutzers postage," said the carrier, holding out a large sealed letter. "ten kreutzers," murmured schiller, as he nervously fumbled in the pockets of his dressing-gown and then in the table-drawer. "here are the ten kreutzers, in case you should not happen to have the small change," said streicher, hastily, as he handed the carrier the money and received the letter. "and here it is, friend schiller. is it from your father?" "yes, my friends, it is from him. and may the gods have been graciously inclined, and have opened my father's heart to his son's prayer!" he hastily tore off the cover and threw open the large folded sheet. "alas, my friends," he sighed, "it is a very long letter, and that bodes no good, for he who gives says but little, but he who denies clothes his refusal in many prettily-turned phrases. let me read!" a few moments of silence followed. schiller, seated on his chair, his arm resting on the table, was reading his father's letter, while andrew streicher and oswald schwelm were standing opposite him, in the window-niche, regarding him anxiously and inquiringly. they saw that schiller's brow grew darker and darker; that his cheek became paler; and that the corners of his mouth quivered, as they always did when the poet's soul was moved with anger or pain. "read, andrew," said schiller, handing the letter to andrew streicher, after a long silence. "read my father's letter aloud, that you may both know what i have to expect; that you may perceive that i am nothing but a poor, miserable dreamer, in whom no one believes, not even his own father, and who must be awakened from his illusions by harsh words. andrew, read the lecture addressed by my father to his miserable son. to hear these unhappy words from your lips will serve as a penance, and may perhaps have the effect of bringing you to the conclusion that my father is right in giving me up. read it, streicher." streicher took the proffered letter and read aloud: "'/my son/!--here i sit with his letter before me, and its perusal has provoked tears of displeasure. i have long since foreseen his present position, the foundation of which has already been laid in stuttgart. i have faithfully warned him against it, given him the best advice, and cautioned him against expending any thing over his income, and thereby involving himself in debts, which are very readily made, but not so easily paid. i gave him an adequate outfit upon leaving the academy. to give him a start in the world, our gracious duke gave him for his services what, together with the little his parents were able to do for him from day to day, would have been an ample support for him as an unmarried man. but all these advantages, all my teachings, and all hopes of better prospects here, have been able to effect nothing. he has combated all my reasons, made light of my experience and of the experience of others, and has only listened to such counsels as would inevitably insure his destruction. god in his wisdom and goodness could choose no other way to bring him to a knowledge of himself than by sending this affliction to convince him that all our intellect and power, all reliance upon other men, and upon accidental and happy contingencies, are for the most part vain, foolish, and fallacious, and that it is he alone who helps all those who pray to him earnestly and patiently.'" "as if i had not done so!" interrupted schiller. "as if i had not besought the great ruler of the destinies of men, in deep fervor and humility of soul, to cast a ray of enlightening grace upon the head of him who had believed it to be his duty to follow the divine call of poetry, and who for its own sake had joyfully relinquished all other earthly prospects and hopes! but my fervid prayers were in vain; no ray of mercy has illumined my poor, gloomy chamber; and from god and man alike the poet receives an angry refusal, and is dismissed as a beggar!--read on, streicher! i will drink the cup of bitterness to the dregs; not a single drop of gall shall remain untasted. read on, my friend!" "but, frederick," said streicher, in a tender, imploring voice, "why impose upon yourself and us the penance of reading these hard words? your father means well with you undoubtedly. he is a good and honorable man, but from his stand-point the world has a different appearance than from that of the heights of parnassus. he estimates you by an ordinary scale, and that is not adapted to frederick schiller. that your father will not furnish you the required three hundred florins was evident from the commencement of the letter, and that suffices." "no, that is not enough," exclaimed schiller, earnestly. "you shall know what my own father thinks of me, that you may be under no more illusions concerning me, and not have to reproach me some day with having infected you with my fantasies, and held out hopes that would never be realized. i beg you, therefore, to read on. it seems as if the scorching words of paternal anger might in some degree expiate the criminality of my conduct. read!" "well, fritz, if you insist upon it, i will do so," sighed streicher; and in a loud voice he resumed the reading: "'he has not been humbled by all the chastening administered to him since his departure, and experience only has made him wiser. that he has suffered from intermittent fever for eight entire months, does no credit to his professional studies; and in the same case he would certainly have bitterly reproached a patient for not having followed instructions in regard to diet and mode of living. man is not always dependent upon circumstances, or he would be a mere machine. my dear son has never striven with himself, and it is highly improper and sinful to throw the responsibility of his not having done so upon his education in the academy. many young men have grown up in this institution who demanded and received as little assistance, and they are now doing well, and are much esteemed and provided for. how does he suppose we poor parents feel when we reflect that these troubles would not have overtaken him, that we would have been spared a thousand cares on his account, and that he would certainly have achieved what he sought if he had remained here? in brief, he would have been happier, more contented, and more useful in his day and generation, if he had been satisfied to pursue a medium course in life, and had not aspired to take so high a flight. nor is it necessary that a superior talent should be made manifest outwardly, at least not until the benefits accruing from its exercise can be shown and proven, and it can be said, "these are the fruits of diligence and intelligence." pastor hahn and pastor fulda are both great men, and are visited by all travelling scholars, and yet they look like other men. as for the three hundred florins, i must say that this demand has excited my great displeasure. i have never given him cause to think, "my father can and will rescue me when i become involved in difficulties." and he knows himself that i have three other children, none of whom are provided for, and from whom much has already been withheld on his account. on his prospects, hopes, plans, and promises, i can advance nothing, as i have already been so badly deceived. even if it were possible to place some faith in them, i could not raise the money; for, although i am known as an honest man, my financial condition, and the amount of my salary, are also well known; and it is evident that i would not be able to pay a debt of from two to three hundred florins out of my income. i can do nothing but pray for my son! his faithful father, /schiller/.'"[1] "can do nothing but pray and scold," exclaimed schiller, emphatically. "there you see what an unworthy, trifling fellow i am. all the hopes which my family and friends entertained for me, yes, which i entertained for myself and my talents, are blighted, dissolved in smoke like burning straw. nothing real is left but the burden of my debts, and my poverty. my good oswald, you have had the weakness to believe in me, and to accept a draft on my future. to your own detriment, you must now perceive that this draft is worthless, and that my father was right in reproaching me for having had the temerity to attempt to make a german poet out of a wurtemberg regimental surgeon." "do not speak so, frederick schiller," exclaimed streicher, indignantly. "your words are blasphemous; and all germany would be angry with you if it heard them!" "but all germany would take good care not to pay my debts. while i, in holy and true disinterestedness, am ready to consecrate my whole being to the service of my country, and to devote all the powers of my mind and talents to its benefit, its instruction and entertainment, if i should demand of the german nation that it should also bring me an offering, that each individual who had read and seen my tragedies should give me a groschen, each one would deny that he had ever seen or read them, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, would turn from the beggar who had the temerity to require any thing of the public but its applause and its momentary delight. my friends, i am very miserable, for you must know that this is not the only large debt which troubles me. there were other noble souls who had confidence in my success, and allowed themselves to be bribed by 'the robbers.' my noble friend, madame von wolzogen, who gave the homeless one an asylum on her estate in bauerbach, when he had fled from ludwigsburg, did more than this. when, after a sojourn of seven months in her beautiful tusculum, i marched out into the world again, she loaned me two hundred florins, which i solemnly promised to return in a year. the year has expired, my noble friend depends on this sum to make a necessary payment on a mortgage which is attached to her estate, and i am not able to keep my word. i must expect her to consider me a swindler who has cheated her with empty promises!" "no, madame von wolzogen will not think so, for she knows you," exclaimed streicher, indignantly. "she will be as far from thinking so as i am," said oswald schwelm, gently. "it is not your fault that you are in pecuniary difficulties; the blame does not attach to you, but to the german public, to the german nation, which allows its poets to suffer want, even while enraptured with their works. the german people are prodigal with laurels and wreaths, but cannot be taught that laurels do not sustain life, and that wreaths are of no avail to the poet if they do not also prepare a home for him, where he can await the muses at his ease, and rest on his laurels. ah, frederick schiller, when i see how you, one of the noblest of poets, are tormented by the want of a paltry sum of money, my eyes fill with tears of compassion, not for you, but for the german fatherland, which disowns its most exalted sons, while it worships the foreigner and gives a warm reception to every stranger charlatan who condescends to come and pocket german money for his hackneyed performances." "no, no," said schiller, hastily. "you must not abuse and condemn the object of my highest and holiest love. as a true son never reviles his mother, even when he believes that she has been unjust to him, so the true son of germany must never scold his sublime mother, but must love her tenderly and endearingly, even if she should accord him nothing but a cradle and a grave. as we say, 'what god does is well done,' we must also say what germania does is well done. and believe me, my friends, if i truly deserve it, and if, as you say, and i hope, i am really a poet, the german fatherland will smile upon me, and give me the bread of life for the manna of poetry. men will not let him die of hunger to whom the gods have given the kiss of immortality." "amen," said streicher, with a slight touch of derision. "yes, amen," repeated schiller, smiling. "it was well, friend oswald, that you awakened the patriot in me by your indignation in my behalf, for the patriot has helped me to overlook my little earthly necessities. my friends, be patient and indulgent with me. better times are coming, and if i am really a poet the gods will take pity on me, and a day of recognition and renown will also come! to be sure, i have nothing to offer you at present but hope. the draft on the future is all i can give you, my good oswald, for the money you loaned me." "this draft is, in my eyes, the most beautiful coin," said oswald schwelm, heartily, "and truly it is not your fault that my hard-hearted creditor cannot take the same view of the matter, but demands payment for the publication of 'the robbers.' well, we will speak of it no more. forgive me, schiller, for having caused you disquiet by coming here. but, as i said before, i did not think of the ingratitude of the german fatherland, but only of the german poet who had given it 'the robbers,' 'fiesco,' and 'louise müllerin;' and i hoped that applause had made him rich. give me your hand, schiller, and let us say farewell." "and what will you do, my poor friend?" asked schiller, feelingly. "will you return to stuttgart, where the hard-hearted creditor awaits you?" "no, no," answered oswald, "i will not return to stuttgart, for the warrant of arrest would hang over my head like the sword of damocles! i will go to carlsruhe, where i have an old uncle, and will endeavor to soften his heart. do not trouble yourself about me, my friend; and may your cheerfulness and the creative power of the poet not for a single moment be darkened by the remembrance of me! we prosaic sons of humanity are often aided by accident, and find some little avenue of escape from the embarrassments of life, while you poets march through the grand portals into the temple of fame, where you are more exposed to the attacks of enemies. farewell, friend schiller, and may great jupiter ever be with you!" "adieu, friend schwelm!" said schiller, extending his hand and gazing sadly at his kind, open countenance. "you assume to be gay, in order to hide your anxiety; but i see through the veil which friendship and the goodness of your heart have prompted you to assume, and behind it i detect a careworn, anxious look. oh, my friends, i am a poor man, and am only worthy of commiseration; and it is all in vain that i endeavor to arm myself against a knowledge of this fact." "no, you are a great and enviable man," exclaimed streicher, with enthusiasm. "of that we are all assured, and you also shall become convinced of it. you are ascending the mountain which leads to renown, and, although now enveloped in a cloud, you will at last attain the heights above, and be surrounded with a halo of sunshine and glory." "i wish, my friend," said schiller, pointing with a sad smile to the ashes in the stove, "i wish we had some of this sunshine now, and were not compelled to warm the room with such expensive coals. but patience, patience! you are right, andrew, i am ascending a mountain, and am now in a cloud, and therefore it is not surprising that i feel chilly and uncomfortable. but better times are coming, and my health will improve, and this bad cough and fever will no longer retard my footsteps, and i will be able to mount aloft to the abode of the gods with more rapid strides. farewell, my friends! my writing-table seems to regard me with astonishment, as if asking why i have not brought it my customary ovation." "let it look and inquire," said streicher. "you must make no reply, but must first break your fast, as any other honest man would do. come and breakfast with us at the inn, frederick. a man must eat, and, although i unfortunately have not enough money to satisfy this cerberus of a creditor, i have at least enough to pay for a breakfast and a glass of wine for us three. come, frederick, get yourself ready quickly, and let us tread the earth with manly footsteps, and compel it to recognize us as its lords." "no, you good, thoughtless man of the world," said schiller, smiling; "no, i must remain here! i must work on at 'don carlos,' who gives my mind no rest by day or night, and insists on being completed!" "but promise me, at least, fritz, that you will breakfast before you go to work?" "i promise you! now go, andrew, for the good schwelm is already holding the door open, and waiting for you." chapter iii. henrietta von wolzogen. "breakfast," murmured schiller, after his two friends had taken leave of him. "oh, yes, it were certainly no bad idea to indulge in a hot cup of coffee and fresh sweet rolls. but it costs too much, and one must be contented if one can only have a cup of fresh water and a piece of bread." he stood up and returned to the chamber, to complete the toilet so hastily made before, to adjust his hair, and put on the sober, well-worn suit which constituted alike his work-day and holiday attire. after having finished his toilet, schiller took the pitcher, which stood on a tin waiter by the side of a glass, and bounded gayly down the stairway into the large courtyard and to the fountain, to fill his pitcher at the mouth of the tragic mask from which a stream of water constantly gushed. this was schiller's first morning errand. every morning the people in the house could see the pale, thin young man go to the fountain with his pitcher; and it amused them to watch him as he walked up and down the yard with long strides, looking heavenward, his head thrown back, and his chest expanded with the fresh morning air, which he inhaled in long draughts. then, when he had stretched and exercised his limbs, breathed the air, and looked at the heavens, he returned to the fountain, took up his pitcher, running over with water, ran into the house, up the stairway, and re-entered his dingy little room. but he brought the heavens and the fresh morning air with him, and his soul was gladdened and strengthened for his poetic labors. to-day the fresh air had done him much good; and, after he had drunk his first glass of water, and eaten his bread and butter, which he took from a closet in the wall, he looked pleased and comfortable; a smile glided over his features, and his eyes brightened. "how rich is he who has few wants," he said softly to himself, "and how freely the spirit soars when its wings are unencumbered with the vanities of life! come, ye muses and graces, keep a loving watch around my table, and guide my hand that i may write nothing that does not please you!" he threw himself on the chair before the table, took up his pen, rapidly read what he had last written, and with a few strokes finished the last great scene of the third act of his new tragedy, "don carlos." "und jetzt verlaszt mich!"[2] recited schiller, as his pen flew over the paper; and then he continued, in a changed voice: "kann ich es mit einer erfüllten hoffnung,--dann ist dieser tag der schönste meines lebens!" and then he added, in the first voice: "er ist kein verlorener in dem meinigem!" "yes," exclaimed schiller, in a loud voice, as he threw his pen aside, "and it is not a lost one in mine. at some future day i will think of this hour with joy and satisfaction--of the hour in which i wrote the closing scene of the third act of a tragedy, a dramatist's greatest and most difficult task. oh, ye muses and graces, whom i invoked, were you near me, blessing my labors? i laid my human sacrifice of pain and suffering on your altar this morning, and my poor head once more received the baptism of tears. bless me with your favor, ye muses and graces, and let me hope that the tears of the man were the baptism of the poet! yes, my soul persuades me that i am a poet; and this new work will attest it before the world and mankind, and--" a cry of surprise and dismay escaped his lips, and he stared toward the door which had just been opened, and in which a lady appeared who was completely wrapped up in furs, and whose face was entirely shaded by a hood. "madame von wolzogen," he exclaimed, rising quickly. "is it possible? can it be you?" he rushed forward and seized her hand, and when he encountered her mournful gaze he sank on his knees and wept bitterly. "oh, my friend, my mother, that we should meet under such circumstances! that i should be compelled to throw myself at your feet in shame and penitence!" "and why, schiller?" asked madame von wolzogen, in her soft, kindly voice. "why must you throw yourself at my feet, and why this penitence? be still. do not reply yet, my poor child. first, hear me! my only reason in coming here was to see you. it seemed impossible, unnatural, that i should pass through mannheim without seeing my friend, my son, my frederick schiller! my sister, who lives in meiningen, has suddenly fallen ill, and has called me to her bedside. well, i am answering her call; for no one has ever appealed to henrietta von wolzogen in vain. i have ridden all night, and will soon resume my journey. the carriage is waiting for me at the corner. i inquired my way to schiller's dwelling; and here i am, and i wish to know, frederick schiller, what this silence means, and why you have not written to me for so long a time? that i must know; and i am only here for the purpose of putting this one question: schiller, have you forgotten your friends in bauerbach? have you forgotten me, who was your friend and your mother?" "no, no," he cried, rising and throwing his arms tenderly around madame von wolzogen's neck, and pressing her to his heart. "no, how could i forget your goodness, your generosity, and friendship? but can you not comprehend, my friend, why your arrival could have a terrible effect on me--could bring me to the verge of despair?" "only see how the poetic flame bursts forth when we prosaic people ask a practical question--when we have to remind poets that, unfortunately, we are not fed upon ambrosia falling from heaven! but i imagined that my wild boy would be once more tearing his own flesh, and terribly dissatisfied with his destiny. and i am here, schiller, to tell you that you must think better of me and better of yourself, and not confound noble friendship with ignoble gold, which shrewd people call the mainspring of life, but which is, fortunately, not the mainspring of friendship, and--" "oh, my friend, if you knew--" "silence! the philippic which i had time to prepare at my leisure during my night ride, and which i am determined to inflict upon the capricious and wayward boy, if not upon the man, is not yet ended. is it possible that your heart could be forgetful of and untrue to the past? and why? because his poor motherly friend has written him in confidence that she would be glad if he would return at least a part of the sum of money she had loaned him. and what is his reply? nothing, nothing at all! he throws his friend's letter into the fire, and--" "into the fire of his anguish, of his reproaching conscience," interrupted schiller, passionately. "he was silent, because it wrung his heart to stand even for a moment in the category of those who had defrauded you. oh, my dear friend, toward whom i feel drawn as a loving, obedient son, consider in your sensitive woman's heart if the thought of breaking my faith and becoming a traitor to you was not calculated to drive me to desperation! confiding in my honesty, you loaned me a considerable sum of money, the more considerable as you were not rich, and were yourself compelled to borrow the money from a jew. i solemnly promised to return the borrowed sum within the course of a year. the year has expired, the jew urges payment; and now, when you gently remind me of my promise, i feel with shame and rage that i have broken my word, and acted dishonorably toward you; and, therefore--oh, out upon contemptible, cowardly human nature, which dares not look its own weakness in the face!--and therefore i was silent. how often did my heart prompt me, in my distress of mind, to fly to your friendship for relief! but the painful consciousness of my inability to comply with your request and pay my debt, held me back. my powerlessness to meet your just demand made the thought of you, which had ever been a source of joy, a positive torment. whenever your image appeared, the picture of my misery rose up before me. i feared to write to you, because i had nothing to write but the eternal: 'have patience with me!'"[3] he laid his head on madame von wolzogen's lap and sobbed; but with gentle force she compelled him to rise. "stand up, schiller; hold your head erect. it does not beseem you to despair and complain like other poor, suffering children of humanity. you, who are marching upward to parnassus, should tread under foot the vermin of earthly cares." "but this vermin does not lie at my feet, but is in my brain, and will drive me mad if this goes on! but i must tell you, you must know the truth: it is impossible for me to pay you any part of my debt. oh, it is hard to say these words; nevertheless, i must not be ashamed, for it is destiny. one is not to be deemed culpable because one is unfortunate."[4] "and one is not unhappy because one has no money," said madame von wolzogen, smiling. "one is only retarded and checked, like the fiery young steed, impatient to bound madly over the plain and dash up the mountain, but prevented by the tightly-drawn reins. but, my friend, this need cause you no unhappiness. with the strength of brave determination, and the energy of creative power, you will break the reins, liberate yourself, and soar aloft. even the winged pegasus bears restraint, and must suffer it; but the poet, who holds and guides the reins, is free--free to mount aloft on his winged steed. and as he soars higher and higher, the earth, with its want and distress, grows less and less distinct. then look upward, friend schiller, upward to parnassus, where golden renown and immortality await you!" "words, beautiful words!" exclaimed schiller. "oh, there was a time when the hope of renown was a source of as intense delight to me as an article of jewelry is to a young girl. now, i am indifferent to every thing. i am willing to serve up my laurels in the next 'boeuf à la mode,' and to resign my tragic muse to your dairy-maid, if you keep cows.[5] how pitiable is a poet's renown, compared with a happy life! and i am so unhappy that i would willingly exchange all my expectations of future renown for a valid check for one hundred thousand florins, and--" "be silent!" exclaimed madame von wolzogen, imperiously. "you slander yourself. thank god, these utterances do not come from your heart, but from your lips; and that the blasphemies which anger provokes are in a language known and understood only by your fantasy, and not by your mind! i told you before, that it did not beseem you to grovel in the dust. but now i say: down on your knees, frederick schiller, on your knees, and pray to your own genius for forgiveness for the words which you have just spoken." "forgiveness," groaned schiller, falling on his knees. "i beg forgiveness of you, my friend, my mother. i am a criminal--am like peter, who in the hour of trial denied his lord and saviour--and reviled that which is greatest and holiest on earth. be indulgent, have patience with me! better times will come! the foaming and fomenting juice of the grape will clear, and become the rich, fiery wine which refreshes and makes glad. no, i do not despair of my future, and you who love me shall not do so either, and--" "we do not," said madame von wolzogen, smiling. "you are a wonderful man! you are like the changing skies in storm and sunshine--first threatening clouds, then celestial blue; before anger and despair, now joy and hope. and this, my dear young friend, is the best evidence that you are truly a poet; and if you had not known it already, this hour should assure you of the fact. i, however, frederick schiller, have never doubted either your genius or yourself; and i have come to tell you this, and dissipate the dark cloud that was forming between two friends.--no, frederick, we will not permit the sun of our friendship to be darkened. we must be honest, true, and sincere to one another; but we must not be silent and withhold a word of sympathy whenever one of us cannot grant what the other requires. i know that you are embarrassed and in want; and notwithstanding all my friendship, i cannot aid you. you know that the jew israel demands the sum which i borrowed of him; and it is not in your power to return it, although it is very inconvenient for me, and very painful to you. but shall we, because we are needy, make ourselves poor also? shall we, because we have no money, have no friendship either?" "no, my dear, my great, my good lady," exclaimed schiller, his countenance radiant with joy. "no, we will strengthen and console ourselves with friendship, and it must compensate us for all else. oh, how poor and needy one would be in the possession of millions, without love and friendship! i, however, am rich, for i have dear friends--" "and have, perhaps, besides friends, the precious treasure of a sweetheart? oh, schiller, how very prettily you blush, and how conscious you look. in love--once more in love! but in love with whom, my poet, with one or with two? and is the dear one's name margaret, or charlotte, or laura, or--" "enough, enough," cried schiller, laughing, "the dear one's name is love, and i seek her everywhere, and think i find her in every noble and beautiful female face that wears the smile of innocence and the dignity of beauty, that meets my gaze. my heart is thrown open to permit love to enter as a victorious queen, and take possession of the throne of beauty which i have erected in its sanctuary at the side of the altar of friendship, on which you reign supreme, my dear madame wolzogen, my second mother! ah, how i thank you for having come! your loving hand has removed from my soul the load of shame and humiliation, and i once more feel light and free; and i can now speak to you about these disagreeable money matters with calmness. no, no, do not forbid me, my dear lady, but let me speak on. listen! i have been sick throughout almost the entire past year. gnawing disquiet and uncertainty in regard to my prospects have retarded my recovery. this alone is the reason why so many of my plans have miscarried, and i have not been able to work and earn as much as i hoped. but i have now marked out my future course after mature consideration. and, if i am not disturbed on my way, my future is secured. i am putting my affairs in order and will soon be in a condition to pay all my debts. i only require a little time, until my plans begin to work. if i am hampered now, i am hampered forever. this week i will commence editing a journal, the _rhenish thalia_. it will be published by subscription; and a helping hand has been extended to me from many places. the journal will be a success, and i shall derive from it a certain income which will be sufficient for my support. from the proceeds of my theatrical pieces i shall be able to pay off my debts by degrees, and above all, my debt to you, my friend. i solemnly promise to pay you the entire amount, in instalments, by the end of next year, and i will make out three drafts which shall certainly be honored when due. do not smile incredulously, my dear lady, but depend upon my assurances. i am certain that god will give me health to attain this noble aim."[6] "my friend," said madame wolzogen, with emotion, "may god give you health and strength, not to enable you to pay this little debt, but to enable you to pay the great debt you owe the world! for the world requires of you that you use the great capital of poetry and mind with which god has intrusted you, as the talent which shall bear interest to the joy of mankind and your own honor and renown. it is a high and difficult calling for which god has chosen you. you must march in advance of humanity as its poet and priest, proclaiming and sympathizing with its sorrows and sufferings, and awakening that enthusiasm which leads to action and promotes happiness. ever keep your noble ends in view, my friend, and when the little cares of life annoy you, disregard them, as the lion does the insects that fly around his head, and which he could destroy with a single blow of his paw, did he deem it worth the trouble. and now that we have come to an understanding, and know what we are and intend to remain to each other, and as my time has expired, i must leave you, for my sister is awaiting me. farewell, frederick! give me your hand once more, and now, hand in hand, let us vow true friendship, that friendship which is never dumb, but imparts to the sister soul its joys and sorrows." "so let it be," said schiller, earnestly. "in joy and in sorrow i will ever turn to you, my friend, and second mother; and i now beg you never to doubt me. you were, are now, and always will be, equally dear to my heart. i can never be faithless to you, although circumstances and fate might make me appear so outwardly. never withdraw your love from me. you must and will learn to know me well, and you will then, perhaps, love me a little better. let nothing impair a friendship so pure, sealed under the eye of god.[7] and be assured i will always love you with the tenderness of a son, although you would not permit me to become your son. i do not reproach you, because i knew you were right. i am at the starting-point of my career, and dare not yet stretch out my hand after the woman i love!" henrietta von wolzogen laid her hand on schiller's shoulder and looked smilingly into his large blue eyes. "after the woman you love?" she whispered. "you, dear boy, admit that the woman you love has not yet been found, and that for the present your heart is playing blind-man's-buff with all the pretty young women? for instance, my daughter charlotte is almost forgotten, because the beautiful madame vischerin has such lovely eyes and converses so agreeably. then we have margaret schwan, who schiller would now certainly love to the exclusion of all others, if, fortunately or unfortunately, madame charlotte von kalb had not been sojourning in mannheim for the last few weeks. she is certainly not exactly beautiful, but then she has such eyes; eyes that glow like a crater of passion, and her words are flaming rockets of enthusiasm. this, of course, charms the young poet; he stands hesitating between margaret and charlotte; and will at last, because he does not know whether to turn to the right or to the left, walk straight on, and look farther for the lady of his love. farewell, schiller, you faithful friend, you faithful lover! farewell!" and waving her hand as a last adieu, madame von wolzogen left the room. schiller cast a confused and troubled look after her. "can she be right?" he murmured. "have i really a heart that only seizes upon an object to relax its hold again? where is the solution of this enigma? have i ever loved, and is my heart so fickle that it can hold fast to nothing?" he walked to and fro in his little room with great strides, his brow clouded and his eyes looking inward, endeavoring to unravel the mysteries of his heart. "no," he said, after a pause. "no, i am not fickle. to her who loved me i would hold firmly in love for ever and ever. but here is the difficulty! i have never found a woman who could or would love me. my heart longs for this sweet interchange of thought; and new sources of happiness and enthusiasm would be opened to me if this ardently-wished-for woman would but appear! it seems the poor, ugly, and awkward frederick schiller is not worthy of such happiness, and must be contented with having had a modest view of love in the distance, like moses of the promised land, without ever having entered its holy temple." with a sigh, schiller threw himself in the chair before the table and covered his quivering face with his hands. but he soon let them fall, and shook his head with an energetic movement. "away with sensitiveness!" said he, almost angrily, "i must accustom myself to be happy on earth without happiness. and if i have no sweetheart, i have friends who love me, and the friendship of a noble soul can well console me for the denied love of a perhaps fickle heart. for he who can call but one soul on earth his friend is blessed, and sits at the round-table of the gods. my poor posa, i will learn from you, and will infuse into you my own feelings. you had but one friend on earth, and the love you could give to no woman you bestowed upon humanity, upon your people. i also will open my heart to humanity, and one woman i will love above all others, and her name shall be germania! i will serve her, and belong to her, and love her as long as i live. hear my vow, ye muses and gods! germania is my love. i will be her poet and her servant; on bended knees i will worship her; i will raise her to the skies, and never falter in my devotion, for to her belong the holiest impulses of heart and soul alike. and now, frederick schiller, be resolute, be strong and joyful. you are germania's lover and her son. determine to do what is good and great, throughout your lifetime, to her honor and renown! take up the pen, frederick schiller! the pen is the sword with which you must fight and conquer!" he took the pen and held it aloft; his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and on his smiling lips a silent prayer trembled. the deep silence was again unbroken, save by the rustling of the pen as it glided over the paper. the muses gathered round the poet and smiled on his labors. chapter iv. joy and sorrow. how long he had sat there and written he knew not, he only knew that these had been happy moments of action and creation; that his heart had been full of bliss and his soul overflowing with enthusiasm, and that this high thought had found expression in words. he felt that, like a god, he was creating human beings who lived, moved, and suffered before him. but alas! he was doomed to descend from the serene heights of poetry to the dusty earth; the cares of life were about to recall him from the bright sphere of poetical visions. his door was violently thrown open, and oswald schwelm rushed in, pale and breathless. "help me, for god's sake, schiller! hide me! i have recognized him! he has just turned into this street, followed by two constables." "who? of whom do you speak? who pursues you?" exclaimed schiller, bounding from his seat. "the hard-hearted creditor from stuttgart. some one has advised him that i have come to mannheim, and he has followed me with his warrant, determined to arrest me here. of this i felt assured when i saw him accompanied by the two constables: but, hoping that i had not been perceived, i ran hastily to your room, and now, schiller, i implore you to rescue me from my pursuers, from my unmerciful creditor; to preserve my freedom and protect me from arrest." "that i will do," said schiller, with an air of determination and defiance: and he stood erect and held up his hand as if threatening the invisible enemy. "you shall suffer no more on my account; you shall not be robbed of your freedom." "be still, my friend! i think i hear steps and whispering voices outside the door. hide me! for god's sake, hide me, or--" too late! too late! the door is opened and the cruel creditor enters, accompanied by two constables. schiller uttered a cry of rage, sprang like a chafed lion at the intruder, caught hold of him, shook him, and pressed him back to the door. "what brings you here, sir? how can you justify this intrusion? how dare you cross this threshold without my permission?" to the stormy questions addressed to him by schiller, with a threatening look and knitted brow, the man replied by a mute gesture toward the two constables, who, with a grave official air, were walking toward oswald schwelm, who had retired to the farthest corner of the room. "mr. oswald schwelm, we arrest you in the name of the superior court of mannheim, by virtue of this warrant, made out by the judicial authorities in stuttgart; and transferred, at the request of mr. richard, to the jurisdiction of the authorities in mannheim. by virtue of the laws of this city we command you to follow us without offering any resistance whatsoever." "you have heard it, mr. schiller," said the printer richard, emphatically. "i have a perfect right to enter this room to arrest my debtor." "no, bloodsucker!" cried schiller, stamping the floor with his foot. "no, you have not the right. you are a barbarian, for you desire to deprive a man of his liberty of whom you know that he owes you nothing!" "he made himself responsible for the payment of a sum of three hundred florins; the sum is due, and mr. schwelm must either pay or go to prison." "god help me!" cried schiller, trembling with anger, and deathly pale with agitation. "give me patience that i may not crush this monster in my righteous indignation. i will be calm and humble, i will beg and implore, for something high and noble is at stake, the liberty of a man! be tranquil, friend schwelm; this man shall not carry out his base intention, he shall not arrest you here in my room. this room is my house, my castle, and no one shall violate its sanctity. out with you, you cruel creditor, ye minions of the law! you can stand before my door and await your prey like blood-hounds, but you shall not lay hands on this noble game until it leaves this sanctuary and crosses this threshold. out with you, i say! if you love life, leave quickly. do you not see that i am filled with the holy wrath of outraged humanity? do you not feel that my hands will destroy you if you do not go, and go instantly?" he threw up his arms, and clinched his fists; and, his eyes flaming, and his angry countenance beautiful with inward agitation, he was about to rush upon the men who had taken hold of oswald schwelm, and now looked on in confusion and terror. but oswald schwelm had, in the mean while, liberated himself from their grasp, and now seized schiller's arm and held him back, gently entreating him to let the law take its course and leave him to his fate. he then turned to the officers and begged them to forget mr. schiller's offensive words, uttered in anger; he admitted that they were perfectly in the right, and he was ready to yield to stern necessity and accompany them. as oswald schwelm approached the door, schiller thrust him back, exclaiming in loud and threatening tones: "i will permit no one to pass this threshold. if you will not leave without him, you shall all remain here; and my room, the room of a german poet, shall be the prison of the noble german man, who is guilty of nothing but--" "but not having paid the money he owes me," interposed mr. richard, "the money which he should have paid a year ago. since then he has been continually putting me off with empty promises and evasions. i am tired of all this, will put up with it no longer, and am determined to resort to extreme measures. officers of the law, do your duty, arrest this man, and pay no attention to the boastful words of mr. schiller. he is a poet, and poets are not so particular in their words. one must just let them talk on without heeding what they say! forward now, forward!" "no, no, oswald," cried schiller, trembling with anger. "come to me, oswald, hold fast to me. they shall never tear you from my side. no, never!--no, never!" "what is going on here, who uttered that cry?" asked a loud, manly voice, and the broad, well-conditioned body of a man who was plainly dressed, and whose face wore an expression of good-nature and kindliness, appeared in the doorway. "herr hölzel," exclaimed schiller, with relief. "my landlord, god sends you to our aid!" "what's the matter? what can i do?" asked hölzel. "i came down from the floor above, and in passing your door i heard a noise and disturbance, and my mr. schiller cry out. 'well,' thinks i, 'i must go in and see what's going on.'" "and i will reply--i will tell you what is going on, my dear hölzel," said schiller, with flashing eyes. "we have here an unmerciful creditor and rude minions of the law, who dare to enter my room in pursuit of a friend who has fled to me from stuttgart for help; to me who am the miserable cause of all his misfortunes. good oswald schwelm pledged himself to make good the payment of three hundred florins to the printer who printed my first work, 'the robbers.' at that time we anticipated brilliant success; we dreamed that 'the robbers' was a golden seed from which a rich harvest would be gathered. we have erred, and my poor friend here is now called upon to pay for his error with his freedom." "but he shall not," said mr. hölzel, with vivacity, as he laid his broad hand on schiller's shoulder. "i will not suffer it; your good friend shall have made no miscalculations. now, mr. schiller, you know very well how fond i am of 'the robbers,' and that i see the piece whenever it is given here in mannheim, and cry my eyes out over iffland, when he does charles moor so beautifully; and i so much admire those fine fellows the robbers, and spiegelberg, who loves his captain dearly enough to die for him a thousand times. i will show you, schiller, that i have learned something from the noble spiegelberg, and that the high-minded robber captain is my model. i am not rich, certainly, and cannot do as he did when his money gave out, and take it forcibly from the rich on the public highways, but i can scrape together funds enough to help a good man out of trouble, and do a service to the author of 'the robbers!'" "what do you say, my friend? what is it you will do?" asked schiller, joyfully. "with your permission, i will lend mr. schwelm, with whose family in stuttgart i am well acquainted, and who, i know, will repay me, the sum of three hundred florins for two years, at the usual rate of interest--that is, if he will accept it." "i will accept it with pleasure," said oswald schwelm, heartily grasping hölzel's proffered hand. "yes, i accept the money with joy, and i give you my word of honor that i will return it at the expiration of that time." "i believe you," said hölzel, cordially, "for he who promoted the publication of 'the robbers' by giving his money for that purpose, is surely too good and too noble to defraud his fellow-man. come down into my office with me. business should be done in an orderly manner," said he, as he laughingly surveyed the room, in which nothing was in its proper place, but every thing thrown around in the greatest disorder. "things are not exactly orderly here; and i don't believe there would be room enough on that table to count out the three hundred florins." "very true," said schiller, smiling. "but you must also consider, hölzel, that the table has never had occasion to prepare itself for the reception of three hundred florins." "i, unfortunately, know very well that the managers of the theatres do not pay the poet as they should," said hölzel, contemptuously. "they pay him but a paltry sum for his magnificent works. tell me, schiller, is what mr. schwan told me yesterday true; did the manager von thalberg really give you but eight louis d'ors for your tragedy, 'fiesco?'" "yes, it is true, hölzel, and i can assure you that this table, for my three tragedies, has not yet groaned under the weight of three hundred florins. and this may in some measure excuse me in your eyes for what has occurred." "no excuse is necessary," said hölzel, good-humoredly. "come, gentlemen, let us go down and attend to our business. above all things, mr. printer-of-the-robbers, send your constables away. they have nothing more to do here, and only offend the eye with their presence. and now we will count out the money, and satisfy the warrant." "and make out a note of indebtedness to you, you worthy helper in time of trouble," said oswald schwelm, as he followed the printer and constables out of the room. schiller was also about to follow, but hölzel gently pushed him back. "it is not necessary for you to accompany us, mr. schiller. what has the poet to do with such matters, and why should you waste your precious time? we can attend to our money matters without you; and i am not willing that this harpy of a printer should any longer remain in your presence." "my dear friend," exclaimed schiller, with emotion, "what a kind, noble fellow you are, and how well it becomes you to do good and generous actions in this simple, unostentatious manner! you have freed me from a heavy burden to-day, and relieved my soul of much care; and if my next drama succeeds well, you can say to yourself that you are the cause, and that you have helped me in my work!" "great help, indeed," laughed the architect. "i can build a pretty good house, but of your theatrical pieces i know nothing at all; and no one would believe me if i should say i had helped frederick schiller in his tragedies. nor is it necessary that they should. only keep a kind remembrance of me in your heart, that is renown enough for me, although men should hear nothing about the poor architect, hölzel." "my friend," said schiller, in an earnest, solemn voice, "if i am really a poet, and the german nation at some future day recognizes, loves, and honors me as such, you also will not be forgotten, and men will keep your name in good remembrance; for what a good man does in love and kindness to a poet, is not lost. children and grandchildren will praise his good action, as if he had done it to themselves, and will call him the nation's benefactor, because he was the poet's benefactor. may this be your reward, my friend! i wish this for your sake and for my own. and now go, for my heart is filled with tears, and i feel them rushing to my eyes!" hölzel had already passed out, and gently closed the door, and did not hear these last words. no one saw schiller's gushing tears; no one heard the sobs which escaped his breast; no one witnessed the struggle with himself, with the humiliations, sorrows, and distress of life; no ear heard him complain sadly of want and poverty, the only inheritance of the german poet! but frederick schiller's soul of fire soon rose above such considerations. his glance, which had before been tearfully directed to the present, now pierced the future; and he saw on the distant heights, on the temple of renown, inscribed in golden letters, the name /frederick schiller/. "i am a poet," he cried, exultingly, "and more 'by the grace of god' than kings or princes are. if earth belongs to them, heaven is mine. while they are regaled at golden tables, i am feasted at the table of the gods with ambrosia and nectar! what matter, if poets are beggars on earth--if they are not possessed of riches? they should not complain. have they not the god-given capital of mind and poetry intrusted to them, that it may bear interest in their works? and, though the man must sometimes hunger, a bountiful repast awaits the poet on the heights of olympus! with this thought i will console myself," he added, in a loud voice, "and will proclaim it to others for their consolation. i will write a poem on this subject, and its name shall be, 'the partition of the earth!'" he walked to the table, and noted this title in his diary with a few hasty strokes of the pen. he now wished to return to his tragedy. but the muses had been driven from this consecrated ground by discordant earthly sounds, and were now not disposed to return at his bidding, and the poet's thoughts lacked buoyancy and enthusiasm. "it is useless," exclaimed schiller, throwing his pen aside. "the tears wrung from my heart by earthly sorrow have extinguished the heavenly fire, and all is cold within me! where shall i find the holy, soul-kindling spark?" "in her," responded a voice in his heart. "in charlotte von kalb! yes, this fair young woman, this impassioned soul will again enliven and inspire me. she understands poetry; and all that is truly beautiful and great finds an echo in her heart. i will go to charlotte! i will read her the first two acts of my 'carlos,' and her delight will kindle anew the fire of enthusiasm." he hastily rolled up his manuscript, and took down his hat. he cast no look at the dusty, dingy little mirror fastened to the window-frame. no brush touched his dishevelled hair, or removed the dust and stains from his dress. it never occurred to the poet to think of his outward appearance. what cared he for outward appearances--he who occupied himself exclusively with the mind? he rushed out of the house, and through the streets of the little city. the people he met greeted him with reverence, and stood still to look after the tall, thin figure of the poet. he neither saw nor heeded them. his eyes were upturned, and his thoughts flew on in advance of him to charlotte--to the impassioned, enthusiastic young woman. does her heart forebode the poet's coming? does the secret sympathy which links souls together, whisper: "charlotte von kalb, frederick schiller approaches?" chapter v. charlotte von kalb. she was sitting at the window of the handsomely-furnished room which she used as a parlor. she had just completed her elegant and tasteful toilet; and when the mirror reflected the image of a young woman of twenty, with light hair, slightly powdered, a high, thoughtful forehead, and remarkably large and luminous black eyes, and the tall, graceful figure, attired in a rich and heavy woollen dress of light blue, charlotte von kalb turned from the beautiful vision with a sigh. "i am well worthy of being loved, and yet no one loves me! no one! neither the husband, forced upon me by my family, nor my sister, who only thinks of the unhappiness of her own married life, nor any other relative. i am alone. the husband who should be at my side, is far away at the court of the beautiful queen of france. the sister lives with her unloved husband on her estates. i am alone, entirely alone! ah, this solitude of the heart is cheerless, for my heart is filled with enthusiasm, and longing for love!" she shuddered as she uttered these words, and turned her eyes with a startled, anxious look to the little picture which, together with several others, hung on the window-frame. she slowly walked forward and gazed at it long and thoughtfully. it was only a plain black silhouette of a head taken in profile. but how expressive was this profile, how magnificent the high, thoughtful forehead, how proud the sharply-defined nose, how eloquent the swelling lips, and how powerful the massive chin! it would have been evident to any observer, that this picture represented the head of a man of great intellect, although he had not seen, written underneath, the name frederick schiller! "frederick schiller,"--whispered charlotte, with a sigh,--"frederick schiller!" her lips said nothing more, but an anxious voice kept on whispering and lamenting in her heart; and she listened to this whispering, and gazed vacantly out into the street! the door-bell rang and roused charlotte von kalb from her dreams. some one has entered the house! she hopes he is not coming to see her! she does not wish to see any one, for no one will come whom she cares to see! some one knocks loudly at the door; a crimson glow suffuses itself over charlotte's cheeks, for she knows this knock, and it echoes so loudly in her heart, that she is incapable of answering it. the knocking is heard for the second time, and a sudden unaccountable terror takes possession of charlotte's heart; she flies through the room and into her boudoir, closing the door softly behind her. but she remains standing near it, and hears the door open, and the footsteps of a man entering; and then she hears his voice as he calls to the servant: "madame von kalb is not here! go and say that i beg to be permitted to see her." oh, she recognizes this voice!--the voice of frederick schiller; and it pierces her soul like lightning, and makes her heart quake. it may not be! no, charlotte; by all that is holy, it may not be! think of your duty, do not forget it for a moment! steel your heart, make it strong and firm! cover your face with a mask, an impenetrable mask! no one must dream of what is going on in your breast--he least of all! a knock is heard at the door leading to her bedchamber. it is her maid coming to announce that mr. schiller awaits her in the reception-room. "tell him to be kind enough to wait a few minutes. i will come directly." after a few minutes had expired, charlotte von kalb entered the reception-room with a clear brow and smiling countenance. schiller had advanced to meet her, and, taking the tapering little hand which she extended, he pressed it fervently to his lips. "charlotte, my friend, i come to you because my heart is agitated with stormy thoughts, for i know that my fair friend understands the emotions of the heart." "emotions of the heart, schiller?" she asked, laughing loudly. "have we come to that pass again? already another passion besides the beautiful margaret schwan and the little charlotte von wolzogen?" he looked up wonderingly, and their eyes met; charlotte's cheeks grew paler in spite of her efforts to retain the laughing expression she had assumed. "how strangely you speak to-day, charlotte, and how changed your voice sounds!" "i have taken cold, my friend," said she, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "you know very well that i cannot stand the cold; it kills me! but it was not to hear this you came to see me?" "no, that is very true," replied schiller, in confusion. "i did not come for that purpose. i--why are your hands so cold, charlotte, and why have you given me no word of welcome?" "because you have not yet given me an opportunity to do so," she said, smiling. "it really looks as if you had come to-day rather in your capacity of regimental surgeon, to call on a patient, than as a poet, to visit an intimate acquaintance." "an intimate acquaintance!" exclaimed schiller, throwing her hand ungently from him. "charlotte, will you then be nothing more to me than an intimate acquaintance?" "well, then, a good friend," she said quietly. "but let us not quarrel about terms, schiller. we very well know what we are to each other. you should at least know that my heart sympathizes with all that concerns you. and now tell me, my dear friend, what brings you here at this unusual hour? it must be something extraordinary that induces the poet schiller to leave his study at this hour. well, have i guessed right? is it something extraordinary?" "i don't know," replied schiller, in some confusion. "you don't know!" exclaimed charlotte, with a peal of laughter, which seemed to grate on schiller's ear, for he recoiled sensitively, and his brow darkened. "i cannot account for the sudden change that has come over me," said schiller, thoughtfully. "i came with a full, confiding heart, charlotte, longing to see you, and now, all at once i feel that a barrier of ice has arisen around my heart; your strangely cold and indifferent manner has frozen me to the core." "you are a child; that is to say, you are a poet. come, my poet, let us not quarrel about words and appearance; whatever my outward manner may be, you know that i am sound and true at heart. and now i see why you came. that roll of paper is a manuscript! frederick schiller has come, as he promised to do a few days ago, to read his latest poem to the admirer of his muse. you made a mystery of it, and would not even tell me whether your new work was a tragedy or a poem. and now you have come to impart this secret. is it not so, schiller?" "yes, that was my intention," he replied, sadly. "i wished to read, to a sympathizing and loved friend, the beginning of a new tragedy, but--" "no 'but' whatever," she exclaimed, interrupting him. "let me see the manuscript at once!" and she tripped lightly to the chair on which he had deposited his hat and the roll of paper on entering the room. "may i open it, schiller?"--and when he bowed assentingly, she tore off the cover with trembling hands and read, "don carlos, infanta of spain; a tragedy."--"oh, my dear schiller, a new tragedy! oh, my poet, my dear poet, what a pleasure! how delightful!" "oh," cried schiller, exultingly; "this is once more the beautiful voice, once more the enthusiastic glance! welcome, charlotte, a thousand welcomes!" he rushed forward, seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips. she did not look at him, but gazed fixedly at the manuscript which she still held in her hand, and repeated, in a low voice, "don carlos, infanta of spain." "yes, and i will now read this infanta, that is, if you wish to hear it, charlotte?" "how can you ask, schiller? quick, seat yourself opposite me, and let us begin." she seated herself on the little sofa, and, when schiller turned to go after a chair, she hastily and noiselessly pressed a kiss on the manuscript, which she held in her hand. when schiller returned with the chair, the manuscript lay on the table, and charlotte sat before him in perfect composure. schiller began to read the first act of "don carlos" to his "friend," in an elevated voice, with pathos and with fiery emotion, and entirely carried away by the power of his own composition! but his friend and auditor did not seem to participate in this rapture! her large black eyes regarded the reader intently. at first her looks expressed lively sympathy, but by degrees this expression faded away; she became restless, and at times, when schiller declaimed in an entirely too loud and grandiloquent manner, a stealthy smile played about her lips. schiller had finished reading, and laid his manuscript on the table; he now turned to his friend, his eyes radiant with enthusiasm. "and now, my dear, my only friend, give me your opinion, honestly and sincerely! what do you think of my work?" "honestly and sincerely?" she inquired, her lips twitching with the same smile. "yes, my friend, i beg you to do so." "well, then, my dear friend," she exclaimed, with a loud and continuous peal of laughter; "well, then, my dear schiller, i must tell you, honestly and sincerely, that 'don carlos' is the very worst you have ever written!" schiller sprang up from his chair, horror depicted in his countenance. "your sincere opinion?" "yes, my sincere opinion!" said charlotte von kalb, still laughing. "no," cried schiller, angrily, "this is too bad!" schiller seized his hat, and, without taking the slightest notice of charlotte, left the room, slamming the door behind him.[8] with great strides, he hurried through the streets, chagrin and resentment in his heart; and yet so dejected, so full of sadness, that he could have cried out with pain and anguish against himself and against the whole world. when he saw acquaintances approaching, he turned into a side street to avoid them. he wished to see no one; he was not in a condition to speak on indifferent subjects. he reached his dwelling, passed up the stairway, and into the room, which he had left in so lofty a frame of mind, dispirited and cast down. "it is all in vain, all in vain," he cried, dashing his hat to the floor. "the gold i believed i had found, proves to be nothing but glimmering coals that have now died out. oh, frederick schiller, what is to become of you--what can you do with this unreal enthusiasm burning in your soul?" he rushed excitedly to and fro in his little room, striking the books, which lay around on the floor in genial disorder, so violently with his foot, that they flew to the farthest corners of the chamber. he thrust his hands wildly into his disordered hair, tearing off the ribbon which confined his queue, and struck with his clinched fist the miserable little table which he honored with the name of his writing-desk. these paroxysms of fury, of glowing anger--eruptions of internal desolation and despair--were not of rare occurrence in the life of the poor, tormented poet. "my father was right," he cried, in his rage. "i am an inflated fool, who over-estimates himself, and boasts of great prospects and expectations which are never to be realized! why did i not listen to his wise counsel? why did i not remain the regimental surgeon, and crouch submissively at the feet of my tyrant? why was i such a simpleton as to desire to do any thing better than apply plasters! i imagined myself invited to the table of the gods, whereas i am only worthy to stand as a lackey at the table of my duke, and eat the hard crust of duty and subserviency! she laughed! laughed at my poem! all these words, these thoughts that had blossomed up from the depths of my heart; all these forms to whom i had given spirit of my spirit, life of my life: all this had no other effect than to excite laughter--laughter over my tragedy! oh, charlotte, charlotte, why have you done this?" and he again thrust his hands violently into his hair, and sank groaning into his chair. "i am unhappy, very unhappy! i believed i could conquer a world, and have not yet conquered a single human heart! i hoped to acquire honor, renown, and a competency by the creative power of my talents, and am but a poor, nameless man, tormented by creditors, by misery, and want, who must at last admit that he placed a false estimate on his abilities. truly i am unhappy, very unhappy! entirely alone; none who loves or understands me!" deep sighs escaped his breast, and tears stood in the eyes that looked up reproachfully toward heaven. as he lowered his eyes, he looked toward the writing-table--the writing-table at which he had spent so many hours of the night in hard work; at which he had written, thought, and suffered so much. "in vain, all in vain! nothing but illusion and disappointment! if what i have written with my heart's blood excites laughter, i am no poet, am not one of the anointed! it were better i had copied deeds and written recipes, instead of tragedies, for a living, and--" he ceased speaking as he observed a letter and package, which the carrier had brought and deposited on his table during his absence. a simple letter would have excited no pleasure or curiosity; yes, would even have filled him with consternation, for the letters he was in the habit of receiving only caused humiliation and pain. they were either from dunning creditors, from his angry father, or from theatre-managers, rejecting his "fiesco," as useless, and not adapted to the stage. but beside this letter lay a package; and the letter which schiller now took from the table bore the postmark leipsic. from leipsic! who could write to him? who could send him a package from that city? who had ever sent him any thing but rejected manuscripts and theatrical pieces? "ah, that was it!" he had also sent his "fiesco" to the director of the theatre at leipsic, and this gentleman had now returned it with a polite letter of refusal. of course, it could be nothing else! he wrathfully broke the seal, unfolded the letter, and looked first at the signature, to assure himself that he had not been deceived. but no! this was not the name of the director in leipsic; and what did these four signatures in different handwritings mean? there were: "c. g. körner," and, beside it, "minna stock;" and under these names two others, "l. f. huber," and "dora stock." schiller shook his head wonderingly, and began to read the letter; at first with composure, but, as he read on, became agitated, and his pale cheek colored with pleasure. from the far-off leipsic four impassioned beings wafted a greeting to the distant, unknown poet. they wished to thank frederick schiller, they wrote, for the many delightful hours for which they were indebted to him; to thank him for the sublime poetry which had awakened the noblest feelings in their bosoms and filled their hearts with enthusiasm. they, two bridal couples, were deeply imbued with love for each other, and the high thought and feeling of frederick schiller's poems had excited emotions in them which tended to make them better and happier. they wrote further, that nothing was wanting to complete their happiness but the presence of the poet at the consummation of their union. together they had read his "robbers," his "louise müllerin," and his "fiesco;" and while so engaged love had taken root in their hearts, grown and blossomed, and for all this they were indebted to frederick schiller. they therefore implored him to come to leipsic on the wedding-day. and then in touching, cordial words, they told him that they never spoke of him but as their dearest friend and benefactor. and further, they begged permission to send the accompanying package as a token of their gratitude in the ardent admiration which they entertained for him in common with every feeling heart and thinking head in germany. he laid the letter aside, and hastily opened the package, for he longed to see the persons who so ardently admired him. and there they were, these dear persons, in beautiful miniatures, on each of which the name of the painter, huber, was inscribed. how charming and beautiful were the two girlish faces which seemed to smile upon schiller from the two medallions; how grave and thoughtful the head of the young man designated as körner; how genial and bold the face of the painter huber! but there was something else in the package besides the four portraits. there was a song neatly written on gilt-edged paper, a song from "the robbers," and körner's name was given as the composer. moreover, the package contained a magnificent pocket-book, worked in gold and silk, and embroidered in pearls; in the inside he found a little note in which dora and minna had written that they had worked this pocket-book while their fiancés read his tragedies to them. schiller regarded these tokens of love and esteem with astonishment. it seemed to him that he was dreaming; that all this was an illusion, and could not be reality. how could he, who, but a few hours before had experienced such mortification and humiliation, he who had been ridiculed, scolded, and laughed at; how could he be the happy recipient of such appreciation and recognition? how was it possible that people with whom he was not even acquainted, who knew nothing of him, could send him a greeting, presents, and words of thanks? no, no, it was all a dream, an illusion! but there lay the letter, yes, there lay the eloquent witness of truth and reality! schiller seized the letter with trembling hands, and continued reading. "we must tell you, you great and noble poet, that we are indebted to you for the brightest and best hours of our life. what was good in us you made better, what was dark in us you made light; our inmost being has been elevated by your poems. your sublime words are constantly on our lips when we are together. accept our thanks, frederick schiller, accept the thanks of two german youths and two german maidens! let them speak to you in the name of the german nation, in the name of the thousands of german maidens and youths who sing your songs with enthusiasm, and whose eyes fill with tears of devotion and delight when they see your tragedies!" tears of devotion and delight! schiller's eyes are now filled with such tears. he sinks down upon his knees almost unconsciously, and his soul rises in inspiration to god. he raises his arms and folds his hands as if in prayer, and the tearful eye seeks and finds heaven. "i thank thee, god, that thou hast blessed me with such happiness. i thank you, my absent friends, to whom my heart longs to fly. i thank you for this hour! i thank you, because it is the happiest of my life. your loving greeting sounds on my ear like a voice in the desert, cheering and consoling. and i, who was crushed in pain and despair, once more arise in renewed hope and happiness. o god! when i think that there are, perhaps, others in this world besides you, the two happy couples who love me, who would be glad to know me; that, perhaps, in a hundred years or more, when my dust is long since scattered to the winds, people will still bless my memory, and pay it a tribute of tears and admiration when my body is slumbering in the grave; then, my beloved unknown friends, then i am proud of my mission, and am reconciled to my god and my sometimes cruel fate.[9] "now i know that i am a poet," he exclaimed, rising from his knees and walking to and fro with rapid strides. "it was not a dream, a vain illusion! i am a poet! these noble souls and loving hearts could not have been enkindled by my works if they had not been deeply imbued with the fire of poetry! i am a poet, although she laughed at and ridiculed me! she of all others; she who i thought would certainly understand me!" schiller opened the door to admit some one who knocked loudly. a liveried servant entered and handed him a little note. these few words were written on the sheet of paper in almost illegible characters: "i conjure you to come to me, my friend! i have something of importance to communicate! be magnanimous, and come at once! /charlotte/!" she had appealed to his magnanimity at a favorable moment! she had irritated and mortified him greatly, but balm had been applied to the wound, and it no longer smarted. "go, charles, and tell madame von kalb that i will come at once!" charles leaves the room, followed by schiller, whose thoughts are not occupied with charlotte on the way this time, but with the four friends in leipsic, who love him and who did not laugh at his "don carlos." these thoughts illumine his countenance with serenity and noble self-consciousness. he carries himself more proudly and his face is brighter and clearer than ever before, for the recognition of his fellow-man has fallen upon and elevated him like the blessing of god. he enters charlotte's dwelling and passes through the hall to the door of her room. charlotte awaits him, standing at the open door, her eyes red with weeping, and yet a heavenly smile resting on her countenance. she beckons to him to enter; and when he had done so and closed the door, charlotte falls on her knees before him; she, the beautiful, high-born lady, before the poor young poet--but yet the poet "by the grace of god." "oh, schiller, dear schiller, can you forgive me? i appeal to you, the genius, the noblest of german poets, for forgiveness!" he stooped down to her in dismay. "for god's sake, my lady, what are you doing? how can you so debase yourself? stand up. i conjure you, stand up!" "schiller, not until you have forgiven my error; not until you swear that that horrible scene no longer excites your anger!" "i swear to you, charlotte, that i feel no trace of displeasure. good angels have wafted from me all irritation and anger with the breath of love. and now arise, charlotte! let me assist you with my hand." she took hold of the large hand which he extended, with her two little hands, and raised herself up. "oh, my dear schiller, how i have suffered, and yet how much delight i have experienced since your departure! how fortunate it was that you had forgotten your manuscript in your displeasure! i read it once more, to strengthen my opinion as to its want of merit. but how completely had i been deceived, how sublime a poem is this tragedy, how melodious is the flow of words, how poetic is the heavenward flight of thought! hail to you, my friend, hail to your future, for your latest poem, your 'don carlos,' is the most beautiful you have yet written!" "oh, charlotte," exclaimed schiller, joyfully, "is it true, are you in earnest? but no, only your goodness of heart prompted you to utter these words. in your generosity you wish to soothe the pain your condemnation inflicted." "no, schiller, i swear by all that is high and beautiful, by yourself, by your poetic genius, that your 'don carlos' will adorn your brow with a laurel-wreath of immortality. after the lapse of centuries this tragedy will be still praised and esteemed as a masterpiece; and the entire german nation will say with pride, 'frederick schiller was our own! the poems which excited enthusiasm and delight throughout all europe were written in the german language, and frederick schiller was a german poet!' oh, could my spirit wing its flight earthward to hear posterity proclaim these words, and to sing the song of rejoicing on the immortal grave of him whom my spirit recognized and revered while he still trod the earth in the flesh! schiller, something seems to tell me that i am the muse destined to consecrate the poet with the kiss of love and of pain. what can a woman give the man she honors above all others, and for whom she entertains the purest affection, what more noble gift can she bestow upon him than the kiss of consecration from her lips? take it, frederick schiller, poet of 'don carlos,' take from my lips the kiss of consecration, the kiss of gratitude." "oh, charlotte, my muse, my friend, and let me say the grand, the divine word, my beloved! i thank you!" he entwined her slender figure with his arms; pressed her to his heart, and imprinted a long and ardent kiss upon her lips, then looked at her with sparkling eyes, and, enraptured with her blushing countenance, his lips were about to seek hers for the second time. with a quick movement, charlotte withdrew from his embrace, and stepped back. "the sublime moment has passed," she said, with earnestness and dignity. "we again belong to the world, to reality; now, that we have done homage to the gods and muses, we must again accommodate ourselves to the rules and customs of the world." "and why, charlotte, why should we do so? are not those rules changeable and fleeting? what men denounce as crimes to-day, they proclaim as heroic deeds at some other time; and what they to-day brand as vice, they will perhaps praise as virtue at some future day. oh, charlotte, i love you, my soul calls for you, my heart yearns for you. when i look upon you, all is feeling and blissful enjoyment! let us unite the souls which arise above earthly feeling to divine sublimity; let us unite in the godlike love in which heart responds to heart, and soul to soul. oh, do not look wonderingly at me with those profound and glowing eyes! charlotte, have you not long since known and divined that i loved you, and you only?" "me only," she cried, sadly. "no, it is not so, not me only! it is love that you love in me, and not myself. oh, schiller, beware, i pray you; for your own sake, beware! take back your avowal. i will not have heard it, it shall have died away inaudibly--have been erased from my fantasy. take it back--but no, rather say nothing more about it. let this moment be forgotten, as the last golden ray of the setting sun is forgotten. let us speak to each other as we have been accustomed to do, as friends!" "friends!" exclaimed schiller, angrily. "i say to you, with aristotle: 'oh, my friends, there are no friends!' at least what i feel for you, charlotte, is not friendship! it is ardent, passionate love! but this you cannot comprehend. you do not know what love is; your heart is cold!" "my heart cold?" she repeated, with sparkling eyes. "i not know what love is! and frederick schiller tells me this! the poet's eyes are clouded! he does not look behind the veil, which the usage of the world has thrown over my countenance. i know what love is, frederick schiller! but ought i, the married woman, the wife of an unloved and unloving husband, ought i to know love? must i not wipe the tear of delight from my eye, suppress the longing cry on my lips, and erect a barrier of ice around the heart, that burns and glows with the flames which animate my whole being, giving warmth and light, like the fires in the bosom of the earth? if i were free, if the will of my relations had not forced me to the altar, where i fainted after my lips pronounced the fatal word of assent;[10] if i could name the man i love, i would say to him: 'beloved, you are the life of my life, the heart of my heart, and the thought of my thought. from you i receive all being, and breathe all inspiration from your glances! take me to yourself as the sea receives the drop of rain, absorbing it in its bosom! let me be a part of your life! let me feel that my own being merges its identity in yours! i have lost myself that i may find myself in you. my sun sets, to rise again with you to the serene heights of bliss, of knowledge, and of poetry. for us there is no more parting on earth or in heaven; for we are one, and by murder only can you make of this union two distinct beings capable of going in different directions. but i would not wander on, for separation from you, my beloved, with whom i had been made one, would only be accomplished by shedding my heart's blood. but my lips would not accuse you; they would receive the kiss of death in silence! therefore, if you do not wish to kill me, be true, as i shall be unto death.'" "charlotte, heavenly being," cried schiller, gazing at her radiant countenance with astonishment and delight, "you stand before me as in a halo! you are a titaness; you storm the ramparts of heaven!" a smile flitted over her features, and she lowered the eyes, which had been gazing upward, again to earth, and regarded schiller earnestly and intently. "i have told you how i would speak to the man i loved, if i dared. duty forbids it, however, and i must be dumb. but i can speak to you as a friend and as a sympathizing acquaintance, and rejoice with you over your magnificent work. seat yourself at my side, schiller, and let us talk about your 'don carlos.'" "no, charlotte, not until you have first honestly and openly acknowledged why this sudden change took place, and how it is you are now pleased with what only excited your laughter a few hours ago?" "shall i tell you, honestly and openly?" "yes, my friend, henceforth everything must be open and honest between us!" "well, then, my friend, you yourself bear the blame." "myself? how so, charlotte?" "i acknowledge it out of friendship, your tragedy was spoiled in the reading. you are a poet, but not an orator. in the heat of delivery, my friend forgets that don carlos did not speak suabian german, and that king philip 'halt nit aus stuckart ist.'[11] and now, that i have told you, give me your hand, schiller, and swear that you will forget my laughter!" "no, i will forget nothing that you say or do, charlotte; for all that you do is good, and beautiful, and amiable! i kiss the loved hand that struck me, and would like to demand as an atonement a kiss from the cruel lips which laughed at me." "no jesting, schiller; let us be grave, and discuss the future of your 'don carlos.' something great, something extraordinary, must be done for this great and extraordinary work! it must shoot like a blazing meteor over the earth, and engrave its name in characters of flame on huts and palaces alike. the poet who makes kings and princes speak so beautifully, must himself speak with kings and princes--must obtain a princely patron. and i have already formed a plan to effect this. schiller, you must become acquainted with the duke charles august of weimar, or rather he must become acquainted with you, and be your patron. do you desire this?" "and if i do," sighed schiller, shrugging his shoulders, "he will not! he, the genial duke, who has his great and celebrated goethe, and his wieland, and herder, he will not trouble himself much about the poor young schiller. at the best, he will anathematize the author of 'the robbers,' like all the other noblemen and rulers, and be entirely satisfied if his mad poetry is shipwrecked on the rock of public indifference." "you do the noble duke charles and yourself wrong," cried charlotte, with vivacity. "charles august of weimar is no ordinary prince, and you are no ordinary poet. you should know each other, because you are both extraordinary men. may i make you acquainted with each other? the duke charles august is coming to darmstadt to visit his relations. are you willing to go there and be introduced to him?" "yes; i will gladly do so," exclaimed schiller, with eagerness. "the poet needs a princely protector! who knows whether tasso would ever have written his 'jerusalem delivered,' if the duke of este had not been his friend--if he had not found an asylum at the court of this prince? if you can, charlotte, and if you consider me worthy of the honor procure me this introduction, and the patronage of the duke charles august. may he, who lets the sun of his friendship shine upon goethe, send down one little ray of his grace to warm my cold and solitary chamber! i will crave but little, if the duke would only interest himself in the interdicted 'robbers.' this alone would be of great service to me." "he will, i hope, do more for you, schiller. i know the duke, and also the landgravine of hesse! i will give you letters to both of them, and mr. von dalberg, toward whom the duke is graciously inclined, will also do so. oh, it will succeed, it must succeed! we will draw you forcibly out of the shade and into the light! not only the german people, but also the german princes, shall love and honor the poet frederick schiller; and my hand shall lead him to the throne of a prince." "and let me kiss this fair hand," said schiller, passionately. "believe me, charlotte, all your words have fallen like stars into my heart, and illumined it with celestial splendor!" "may these stars never grow pale!" sighed charlotte. "may we never be encompassed with the dark night! but now, my friend, go!" "you send me away, charlotte?" "yes, i send you away, schiller. we must deal economically with the beautiful moments of life. now go!" on the evening of this day of so many varied emotions, schiller wrote letters, in which he warmly thanked his unknown friends in leipsic. in writing, he opened his heart in an unreserved history of his life--so poor in joys, and so rich in deprivations and disappointed hopes. he imparted to them all that he had achieved; all his intentions and desires. he told them of his poverty and want; for false shame was foreign to schiller's nature. in his eyes the want of money was not a want of honor and dignity. he acknowledged every thing to the distant, unknown friends--his homeless feeling, and his longing to be in some other sphere, with other men who might perhaps love and understand him. as he wrote this he hesitated, and it seemed to him that he could see the sorrowful, reproachful look of charlotte's large, glowing eyes; and it seemed to him that she whispered, "is this your love, schiller? you wish to leave me, and yet you know that you will be my murderer if you go!" he shuddered, and laid aside his pen, and arose and walked with rapid strides up and down his room. the glowing words which charlotte had spoken to him that morning again resounded in his ear, but now, in the stillness of the night, they were no longer the same heavenly music. "i believe it is dangerous to love her," he murmured. "she claims my whole heart, and would tyrannize over me with her passion. but i must be free, for he only who is free can conquer the world and achieve honor; and the love which refreshes my heart must never aspire to become my tyrant!" he returned to his writing-table and finished the letter which he had commenced to körner. he wrote: "i would that a happy destiny led me away from here, for i feel that my stay in this place should come to an end. i wish i could visit you in leipsic, to thank you for the hour of delight for which i am indebted to you! aristotle was wrong when he said: 'oh, my friends, there are no friends!' i think of you and yours; i think of you four, and cry joyously: 'there are friends, nevertheless! blessed is he to whom it is vouchsafed by the gods to find friends without having sought them!'" chapter vi. the title. charlotte von kalb had kept her word. she had equipped schiller with letters of introduction to the duke charles august and members of his family; she had also induced mr. von dalberg to furnish him with letters to influential friends at the court of darmstadt. provided with these recommendations, and in his modesty and humility attaching greater importance to them than to his own reputation and dignity, schiller journeyed to darmstadt, in the beginning of the year 1785, for the purpose of endeavoring to obtain a friend and protector in the duke charles august of weimar. dalberg's and charlotte's letters accomplished more than schiller's name and worth could possibly have done. the author of "the robbers" and "fiesco," poems which lauded freedom and popular government, and of "louise müllerin," which branded aristocracy as opposed to the rights of the human heart; a poet who had dared to defy a prince and a ruler could not have entered the golden gates of a princely palace without the golden key of dalberg's and charlotte's letters. frederick schiller was received at the court of the landgrave in darmstadt. the young and joyous duke charles august of weimar welcomed the poet cordially, and, prompted by the enthusiastic praises of madame von kalb, requested schiller to read him a portion of the new tragedy. schiller offered to read the first act of "don carlos," and his offer was graciously accepted. the reading took place on the afternoon of the same day. a brilliant array of noblemen in embroidered court dress, and adorned with decorations, and of magnificently attired ladies, sparkling with jewels, had assembled in the reception-room of the landgravine. she, the lover of art, the intellectual landgravine of hesse, had seated herself at the side of the duke charles august on the sofa in the middle of the saloon, behind which the ladies and gentlemen of the court were standing in groups. not far off, and completely isolated, stood a plain cane-bottomed chair, and a little round table, on which a glass of water had been placed. this was the poet's throne, and this was the nectar he was to drink at the table of the gods. he felt embarrassed and almost awe-stricken as he entered the brilliant court circle in his homely garb; he felt the blood first rush to his cheeks and then back to his heart again, leaving his countenance deathly pale. "rouse yourself, schiller, and be a man! shame upon you for being blinded by the trumpery and outward glitter of nobility and princely rank!" he said this to himself as he walked to the place set apart for him, feeling that the eyes of all rested on him with a cold, examining glance. "what do i care for this pack of courtiers, this court-marshal von kalb and his associates?" said he to himself, defiantly. "it was not on their account i came here, and what they may think of me is a matter of complete indifference. i aspire only to the good opinion of the duke, of the friend of the great goethe." he looked over toward the sofa, and his glance encountered the eyes of the young duke, whose countenance was turned to him with a smile and an expression of good-natured sympathy. schiller felt encouraged, and a smile flitted over his features. he opened his manuscript and began to read the first act of "don carlos" in a clear and loud voice. his voice was full and sonorous, and his delivery, thanks to charlotte's admonitions, was purer and more moderate; and, as he read on, his embarrassment disappeared, and the clouds lifted from his high brow. the courtiers, who had first regarded the young poet contemptuously, now began to show some sympathy; the head, covered with light-yellow locks, with its sharply-chiselled features and large roman nose, was, now that it was illumined with earnest thought, no longer so homely and uninteresting. the countenance of the landgravine was expressive of the closest attention, and the reading of "don carlos" affected her so profoundly, that she had recourse to her handkerchief to wipe the tears of emotion from her eyes. at times charles august could not repress an exclamation of delight, a loud bravo; and when schiller arose from his seat, after finishing the first act, charles august walked forward to thank the poet with a warm pressure of the hand, and to conduct him to the landgravine, that she might also express her thanks and sympathy. the duke then took the poet's arm, and walked with him through the saloon, to the disgust of the courtiers, who, notwithstanding their devotion, found it somewhat strange that the duke could so demean himself as to walk arm-in-arm with a man without birth or name. but of course this was a natural consequence of the mania after geniuses which reigned in weimar; such abnormities should no longer excite surprise. was there not at the court in weimar so variegated an admixture of well-born and ill-born, that one ran the risk of encountering at any moment a person who was not entitled to be there? had not the duke carried his disregard of etiquette so far, that he had made wolfgang goethe, the son of a citizen of frankfort, his privy-councillor, and an intimate associate? and was it not well known that his mother, the duchess amelia, as well as himself, never made a journey without picking up some genius on the road for their establishment at weimar? this time frederick schiller was the genius whom the duke desired to recruit. that was quite evident, for the duke had been standing with the poet for more than a quarter of an hour in a window-niche, and they were conversing with vivacity. it was offensive and annoying to see this mr. schiller standing before the duke, with a proud bearing and perfect composure; and conversing with him without the slightest embarrassment. but the duke seemed to be greatly interested, and his countenance expressed lively sympathy and kindliness. "i believe that destiny has intrusted you with a great mission, mr. schiller," said the duke, when the poet had given him a brief and terse account of the continuation and contents of his "don carlos." "i believe that you are destined to be the poet-preacher of the people; and to refresh the hearts and enliven the imagination of the degenerate germans; and i prophesy a great future for you! your aim is a noble one. you desire not only to assign to the purely human, but also to the ideal, its proper sphere in this world; and your 'don carlos' is an open combat between the purely human and ideal, against materialism and custom. through it you will make many enemies among the higher classes, and acquire many friends among the masses; and, although you will not be the favorite of princes, you will certainly be beloved by the people. for the judgment of the people is good and sound, and it will always give its sympathies to the champion of the purely human, as opposed to the ridiculous assumptions of etiquette and prejudice. but i tell you beforehand, that, in so-called noble society, you will, with great difficulty, have to fight your way step by step." "i have been accustomed to such warfare since my earliest youth," said schiller, smiling. "fate has not given me a bed of roses, and care has as yet been the only friend who stood faithfully at my side." "you forget the muses," cried the duke, with vivacity. "it seems to me that you have no right to complain of a want of attention on the part of these ladies!" "true, your highness," responded schiller earnestly; "they have at times been graciously inclined, and i am indebted to them for some of the most delightful hours of my life." "nor has the favor of earthly goddesses and muses been wanting to the inspired poet's happiness," said the duke, and he laughed loudly when he saw schiller blush and cast his eyes down. "oh, i see," he cried gayly, "you have earthly muses also, your ideal has become reality! could there be any connection between this and the songs of praise which madame von kalb wrote me concerning you?" "your highness, i really do not understand your meaning." "or rather, will not understand it! but we will not examine the affair any closer. madame von kalb has certainly made it my duty to interest myself for her poet, and i thank her for having made me acquainted with you. and now i should like to give a proof of my gratitude, and it would afford me pleasure to have you tell me in what manner i can be useful to you." "your kind and gracious words have already been of great benefit to me," said schiller, heartily; "your goodness has shed a ray of sunshine into my sometimes cold and cheerless heart." "your heart is never cold, schiller, for the fire of poetry burns there. but in your little chamber it may sometimes be cold and cheerless. that i can well believe, for when the gods rain down blessings upon the poet they generally forget but one thing, but that is the one thing needful, money! the gods generally lay but one sort of capital in the cradle of mortal man, either a capital in mind or one of more material value; and truly he must be a great favorite to whom they give both." "yes, a very great favorite," murmured schiller, in a low voice; and he read in the prince's countenance that he was thinking of his favorite, wolfgang goethe, who had arisen like a meteor before schiller's gaze at the time he visited the charles school in stuttgart, in company with the duke, to witness the distribution of prizes to the scholars of this institution. while the scholar, frederick schiller, was receiving a prize which had been awarded him, the gaze of goethe's large eyes was fixed upon him, but only with the composed expression of a great man who wished him well and condescended to evince sympathy. this look had sunk deep into schiller's heart, and he thought of it now as he stood before the duke in the palace of darmstadt--the duke, who could be a friend to goethe, but to him only a patron and an almsgiver. "i desire to be of service to you if i can," said the duke, who, for some time, had been silently regarding schiller, whose eyes were cast down thoughtfully. "have you any wish, my dear mr. schiller, that i can perhaps gratify? i am certainly not a mighty prince, and unfortunately not a rich one, but if i can help you in any way, i will gladly do so." schiller raised his head quickly, and his eye met the inquiring look of the duke with a proud gaze. not for all the world would he have told the prince of his distress and want, would he have stood on the floor of that palace as an humble beggar, soliciting alms for the journey through life! "your highness, i repeat it, your friendly reception and your sympathy have already been a great assistance to me." the duke's countenance brightened, and he breathed freer, as if a burden had fallen from his soul. "and this assistance shall never be wanting, of that you may be assured. every one shall learn that charles august, of weimar, is happy to know the german poet, frederick schiller, and that he counts him among those who are dear to him. a german duke was your tyrant; a german prince drove you out into the world, therefore it is just and right that another german duke should show you friendship, and endeavor to make your path in life a little smoother. i will be ready to do so at all times, and to testify to my high opinion of yourself and your talents before the whole world, your tyrannical prince included. and a proof of it shall be given you before you leave darmstadt! for the present, farewell, and if you should come to weimar at any time, do not forget to pay your good friend, charles august, a visit! you will not leave until to-morrow morning, i suppose?" "no, your highness, not until to-morrow morning." "well, then, my dear mr. schiller, you will hear from me this evening." schiller returned to his hotel in a thoughtful mood. what could the duke's words mean? what token of esteem would charles august give him? perhaps even an appointment. ah, and if ever so unimportant a one, it would still be an alleviation of relief. perhaps the duke only intended to offer him the use of one of his unoccupied castles, in order that he might finish his "don carlos" in peaceful seclusion. well, that also would be a blessing, a benefit! the homeless one would then have a resting-place from which he could not be driven, where he would not be assailed by the cares and vexations of life. the hours dragged on sluggishly in the bare, uncomfortable little room at the hotel, and the poet tormented himself with suppositions and questions, while he listened attentively to hear the footstep of the expected messenger of the duke. at last, after hours of waiting, a knock was heard at the door, and a ducal lackey handed schiller a large sealed document. it seemed to regard him with a right official and solemn look with its great seal of state bearing the inscription, "ducal private cabinet," and the poet's feelings were of the same nature when he opened it after the lackey's departure. what could it be that the duke offered him, an appointment or a retreat? an expression of astonishment and surprise was depicted on schiller's countenance as he read the document; his brow darkened, and he let the paper fall to the table. the duke offered him neither an appointment nor a retreat. he gave him a title, the title of a ducal counsellor. the secretary of the cabinet made known the generous determination of his master, and informed him that the document appointing him to this office would be made out in official form and forwarded to him on the duke's return to weimar. frederick schiller should, however, be enabled to wear the title so graciously conferred, and call himself "ducal counsellor" from that hour. while reading it for the second time, the poet laughed derisively. this was the solution of the riddle. he who had scarcely known how to counsel himself, was now the counsellor of a prince who would probably never desire his counsel. he who was tormented with cares, who had no home, had nothing he could call his own besides his manuscripts--he was now the possessor of a title. how strange the contrast! the tragedy which waged war against princely prerogatives, etiquette, and ceremony, in favor of humanity, equality before the law, and nobility of soul--this tragedy was to bear, as its first fruit, the favor of a prince. it was strange--it looked almost like irony, and yet!--he thought of charlotte von kalb--she would rejoice to see him thus honored by a german prince. he thought of his old parents, to whom it would undoubtedly be a great satisfaction to know that the former regimental-surgeon of the duke of wurtemberg had become so distinguished. it would prove to them that their fritz, of whom the severe father had often despaired, had nevertheless attained honor and respectability in the eyes of the world. well, then, let it be so! a little appointment would certainly have been better, and some hunting-castle as a retreat would probably have furthered the completion of "don carlos." but one must be contented, nevertheless. the little was not to be despised, for it was an honor and a public acknowledgment, and would, perhaps, have the effect of infusing into the directors a little more respect for the poet, whose dramas they often maltreated and injured by poor and careless representation. with a smile, schiller folded the document and laid it aside. "well," said he to himself, in a low voice, "i entertain the proud hope that i am a poet 'by the grace of god!' moreover, i have now become a counsellor by the grace of a duke. all that i now wish is, that i may at last become a poet and a counsellor, by the grace of the people, and that they may approve my works, and hold me worthy of the title to their love and honor. to be the people's counsellor, is truly an honor above all honors. my soul longs for this holy and beautiful title. with all that i possess in mind and talent, in strength and energy, i will endeavor to deserve it, and to become that which is the poet's greatest and noblest recompense--the teacher and counsellor of the people!" chapter vii. adieu to mannheim! schiller had returned to mannheim as ducal counsellor of weimar. charlotte von kalb received this intelligence with so much joy, that schiller could not help feeling pleased himself. he threw his arms around her, and demanded a kiss as a condition of his retention of the title. charlotte blushingly hid her face on his bosom, but he gently raised her head, and pressed an ardent kiss on the lips which uttered no refusal. but charlotte now demanded that schiller should leave her; and when he refused, and begged and implored that he might be permitted to remain, her eyes glistened, and a glowing color suffused itself over her cheeks. "oh, schiller, you know not what you are doing and what you demand! do you not see that an abyss lies between us?" "i see it, charlotte; but the arm of love is strong and mighty, and he who truly loves, carries the loved woman over all abysses, or else precipitates himself with her into the yawning chasm." "there is another alternative, schiller, and a terrible one. the abyss is crossed, and they are joined; and then afterward his illusion vanishes--he is undeceived. the ideal has been transformed into a very ordinary woman, whom he scorns, because her love was dearer and holier to her than her virtue. she feels his scorn, and the abyss over which he had borne her becomes the grave in which she voluntarily precipitates herself, in order to escape from him she had loved. oh, schiller, if the eye which has heretofore regarded me lovingly should ever cast upon me a glance of contempt! it would crush me, and i should die! yet, in dying, my lips would denounce him who had known how to love, but had not kept faith; and would arraign him as a traitor and murderer before the judgment-seat of god! oh, schiller, i warn you once more not to enkindle a fire in my breast which can never be extinguished or repressed when once in flames, but will blaze upward grandly and proudly, setting aside all thought of the world and its rules and prejudices. we are now walking on the verge of the abyss; you on the one side, i on the other. but our voices reach each other; we can see each other's faces, and our glances can meet in loving friendship. you are free to go where you will; and if your path in life should lead you aside from the road on which i am journeying, i will look after you and weep, but i will make you no reproaches! think of this, schiller, and be contented that charlotte should call you by the name of friend! do not demand that she should give you another name, which you would now bless, but hereafter curse! flee now, while it is yet time; and we shall still have the happy remembrance of the beautiful days of our friendship. let us await the future in quiet resignation, and sustain ourselves with recollections of the past!" "you are in a strange humor to-day, charlotte," said schiller, sadly. "your eyes are so threatening, that i would almost be afraid of you, if i did not know that my titaness is still a gentle, loving woman in spite of her fiery enthusiasm. no, charlotte, you accuse yourself unjustly. no, you would never curse the man you had loved; in death you would bless him for the love he had once given you. you would not denounce, but pity and excuse him whom stern necessity compelled to separate from you--from what is dearest to him on earth. you would know that his path was bleak and lonely, and that, like the faces in dante's 'inferno,' he could only look back at the past with a tearful glance while wandering into the dreary future. this you would do, charlotte. i know you better than you know yourself. the woman never curses the man she has truly loved; she pardons and still loves him when the stream of life surges in between, and forces him to leave her." "for those who truly love, who have plighted troth, there is no such compulsion," cried charlotte, her countenance flushed with indignation. "if you say so, schiller, you do not know what love is. you make light of the holiest feelings when you believe that it could ever be extinguished--that the necessities of life could ever separate two hearts eternally and indissolubly united in love." "how strangely moved you are to-day, charlotte!" answered schiller, his countenance darkening. "i came here with a heart full of joy, and had so much to impart to you! i came as to a happy and peaceful retreat. but i now see that the time was badly chosen, and that charlotte will not understand me to-day. oh, why is it, my dear, that we human beings are all like erostratus, who hurled the firebrand into the holy temple of the gods, and why do we all desire to unveil the mysterious picture in the temple of isis!" "because we wish to look at the truth," she cried, passionately. "the truth is death," sighed schiller, "error is life; and woe to us if we are not satisfied with the beautiful illusion that adorns and disguises life, and casts a veil over death! i am going, charlotte. it is better that i should, for you have saddened me, and awakened painful thoughts in my breast. farewell for the present; and when i come again to-morrow, be kind and gracious to me, charlotte, as you always are at heart!" he took his hat, greeted her with a mournful smile, and left the room. charlotte's eyes followed him with a glance of dismay. "he does not love me," she cried in despair. "he does not love me! if he loved me, he would not have left me without plighting his eternal faith. all that i wished to hear was, that he desired an eternity of love; but he drew back in dismay and left me. he does not love me, and i, o my god, i love him!" she sank down on her knees, covered her face with her hands, and cried bitterly. and schiller's thoughts were also of a bitter, and, at the same time, somewhat disquieting nature. he avoided seeing any one, and remained in his lonely room the entire day. he walked to and fro restlessly; from time to time, he seated himself at the table and wrote a few lines, and then arose, and, resuming his walking, either talked to himself or was lost in thought. charlotte also kept her chamber, and avoided all intercourse with others. late in the evening, a knock was heard at her door, and her maid announced that a letter had arrived from the counsellor schiller. charlotte opened the door, took the letter, and ordered lights to be brought in. she then tore the cover from schiller's letter; in it she found a little note on which the few words had been hastily written: "dear charlotte!--i have written down the thoughts which our conversation of to-day awakened in my bosom; and send them to you, for they belong to you. may we never share the fate of the poor youth in the temple of sais! to seek the truth is to kill love, and yet love is the most beautiful truth; and true it is also that i love you, charlotte! believe this, and let us leave the great isis veiled! /frederick schiller/." after reading this, charlotte unfolded the large sheet which was also contained in the cover. it was a poem, and bore the title, "the veiled picture at sais." charlotte read it again and again, and her soul grew sadder and sadder. "he does not love me," she repeated, softly. "if he loved me he would not have written, but would have come to weep at my feet! that would have been a living poem! oh, schiller, i am the unhappy youth; i have seen the truth! my happiness is forever gone, and, like him, i will go to the grave in despair. i exclaim, with your youth, 'woe to him who commits a crime in order to find the truth! it can never give him joy!'" when schiller returned on the following morning, charlotte gave him a warm welcome, extended both hands, and regarded him with a tender smile, repeating the words from his letter, "let us leave the great isis veiled." schiller uttered a cry of joy, fell on his knees at charlotte's feet, kissed her hands, and swore that he loved her and her only, and that he would remain true to her in spite of all abysses and chasms! but the vows of mankind are swept away like the leaves of the forest; what to-day was green and blooming, to-morrow fades and dies! charlotte may have been right when she said that schiller could love, but could not keep faith, for, after scarcely two months had elapsed since his return from darmstadt, and the date of this interview with charlotte, schiller wrote to his new friend körner, in leipsic, as follows: "i can no longer remain in mannheim. i write to you in unspeakable distress of heart. i can no longer remain here. i have carried this thought about with me for the past twelve days, like a determination to leave the world. mankind, circumstances, heaven, and earth, are against me; and i am separated here from what might be dearer to me than all by the proprieties and observances of the world. leipsic appears to me in my dreams like the rosy morning beyond the wooded mountain-range; and in my life i have entertained no thought with such prophetic distinctness as the one that i should be happy in leipsic. hitherto fate has obstructed my plans. my heart and muse were alike compelled to succumb to necessity. just such a revolution of destiny is necessary to make me a new man, to make me begin to become a poet." and his distant friend in leipsic responded to his cry of distress with a deed of true friendship. he invited schiller to visit himself and his friends in leipsic; and, in order that no moneyed embarrassments should delay schiller's departure, körner forwarded him a draft for a sum sufficient to defray his travelling-expenses and pay off his most pressing debts. chapter viii. plans for the future. the preparations for his departure were soon made. schiller had completely severed his connection with the theatre at mannheim several weeks before. the actors were all inimical to him, because he had dared to take them to task in his journal, _the thalia_, for having, as he said, "so badly maltreated his tragedy, 'intrigues and love.'" the director, mr. von dalberg, had long since considered himself insulted and injured by the free and independent behavior of him who dared array his dignity and pride as a poet against the dignity of the director's office and the pride of aristocracy. this gentleman made no attempt whatever to retain schiller in mannheim. schiller had to say farewell to but few acquaintances and friends, and it was soon over. he packed his little trunk, and was now ready to leave on the following morning. there were only two persons to whom he still wished to bid adieu, and these were charlotte von kalb and andrew streicher. he had agreed to spend the last hours of his stay with streicher at his home, and as every thing was now in order, schiller hurried to charlotte's dwelling as evening approached. she was sitting alone in her room when he entered; the noise of the closing door aroused her from her reverie, and she turned her head, but did not arise to meet him; she gave him no word of welcome, and gazed at him sadly. schiller also said nothing, but walked slowly across the wide room to the sofa on which she was seated, and stood regarding her mournfully. neither of them spoke; deep silence reigned in the gloomy chamber, and yet their souls were communing, and one and the same wail was in both hearts, the wail ever approaching separation and parting. "schiller, you stand before me like the future," said charlotte, after a long pause. "yes, like the future--grand, gloomy, and cold--your countenance clouded." "clouded like my soul," sighed schiller, as he slowly sank on his knees before charlotte. she permitted him to do so, and offered no resistance when he took her hand and held it firmly within his own. "charlotte, my beloved, my dear charlotte, i have come to take leave of you. i must leave mannheim." "why?" "my position here has become untenable. i am at enmity with the authorities of the theatre, and i no longer desire to waste my time and talents on such ungrateful showmen. mr. von dalberg's short-lived courtesy is long since ended, and he does not take my side in the difficulty with the presuming actors. i am tired of this petty warfare, and i am going." "why?" she repeated. "you still ask, charlotte; have i not just told you?" "i have heard pretences, schiller, but not the truth. i wish to know the truth, and i am entitled to demand the truth. the time has arrived to tear the veil from the statue of isis! we must look the truth in the face, even if death should follow in its train! schiller, why are you leaving mannheim? why are you leaving the place where i live?" "ah, charlotte, this is a bitter necessity, but i must bear it. a mysterious power compels me to leave here. who knows where the star of his destiny will lead him? we must follow its guiding light, although all is dark within and around us! true, i had thought that it would be the greatest delight of life to be ever at your side, to share with you all thought and feeling, our lives flowing together like two brooks united in one, and running its course through the bright sunshine with a gentle murmur! but these brooks have become rivers, and their waves, lashed into fury by passion, brook no control, and break through all restraints and barriers. charlotte, i go, because i dare not stay! i will tell you all; you demand the truth, and you shall hear it! charlotte, i go for your sake and for mine! you are married. i go! your pure light has set fire to my soul; have i not reason to dread a future based on falsehood and deception? your presence infused into my bosom an enthusiasm before unknown, but to this enthusiasm, peace was wanting." "oh, remain, schiller, and, if we desire it, we can both find this peace--the peace of friendship!" "no, charlotte, our heart-strings are familiar with a greater harmony!" "well, if it be so, let the strings resound with the harmony of united souls! oh, my friend, if we separate, we will no longer be to each other what we now are. i will not complain, and will not unveil the anguish of my soul before you; and yet, schiller, remain, i implore you! when my candle is brought in, i will no longer enjoy its light; all will still be dark around me, for the evening will no longer bring you, my friend!" "i can, and will be, your friend no longer, charlotte, and therefore i am going! i will be all, or nothing! this suspension midway betwixt heaven and earth is destroying me! my soul glows with passion, and you inhale it with every breath of life. you have not the courage to face the truth!" "i say, with you, i will be all, or nothing," she exclaimed, passionately. "truth and falsehood cannot exist together; and it would be acting a falsehood if i gave my heart unlimited freedom, while my hands are in chains! all, or nothing! only no hypocrisy! i will freely acknowledge my love to the whole world, or i will cover it with the veil of duty and resignation. but i will not sin under cover of this veil! oh, schiller, our life until now was a bond of truth, and you wish to sever it. fate sent you to me; moments of the purest delight were vouchsafed us; and is the cup of happiness to be dashed from our lips now?" schiller did not reply at once, but bowed down over charlotte's hand, and pressed it to his burning brow. "above all," he said, in a low voice, "above all, i know that it is in the bloom of youth only that we truly live and feel. in youth, the soul is illumined with light and glory; and my heart tells me that thou canst never dim its longing." "'thou,' you say," she whispered softly, "then i will also say 'thou!' truthfulness knows no 'you!' the blessed are called 'thou!'[12] it is a seal which unites closely, and therefore we will impress it upon our holy and eternal union!" she threw her arms around schiller's neck--he was still kneeling at her feet--and pressed a kiss on his forehead. he embraced her yet more tenderly, and pressed impassioned kisses upon her brow, her cheeks, and her trembling lips. "farewell, thou only one, farewell!" "oh, frederick," she sobbed, "was this thy parting kiss?" "yes, charlotte, i must go! but you will be present with me in my every thought." "and yet you go, frederick?" "destiny so ordains, and i must obey! the world demands of me the use of my talent--i demand of the world its favor." "and when you have achieved this favor," she said, plaintively, "then you will no longer care for love, or me!" "you should not say so, charlotte, for you do not believe it," said schiller, angrily. "why these painful words? i lose all in you, but you lose nothing in me! you are so wayward--ah, not like the woman i pictured to myself in the days of my youth." "oh, frederick," she murmured, "do you not know that i love you, and you only?" "i have hoped so in many moments of torment when you treated me coldly; but only for the last few days have i felt assured of it, and, on that account, loved, adored woman, the words must be spoken, therefore i flee from you!" "you know that i love you," she cried, plaintively; "you know it, and yet you flee!" "yes, charlotte, i do, because the waves of passion are surging high in my breast, and will destroy me if i remain. peaceful love is the only atmosphere suited to the poet. stormy passion distracts his thoughts and casts a shade on the mirror of his soul." he arose and walked restlessly to and fro. it had grown dark in the mean while, and the figure of her friend flitted before charlotte's vision like a shadow, but her eyes were fixed intently on the shadow which was nevertheless the only light of her being. the figure now stopped before her, and when he laid his hand on her shoulder she felt the electric touch thrill her whole being. they could not see each other's faces on account of the darkness. "charlotte," said schiller, deeply moved, "i owe you a great deal, and i can never forget it. my youth was dreary; i became familiar with error and sorrow at an early day, and this clouded my understanding and embittered my heart! and then my genius found your voice to utter my thoughts. you were my inspired muse, and i loved you, and would be yours forever if i had the courage requisite for such a love!--the courage to permit myself to be absorbed in this passion; to desire nothing more, to be nothing more, than your creature, charlotte; the vase only in which the boundless stream of your love empties itself. but this cannot remain so! my soul must be peaceful and independent of this power which terrifies and delights me at the same time. he only is free who elevates himself above passion, and the man who aspires to bend nature to his will must be free." "you are governed by pride," sighed charlotte, "and pride has no confidence, no repose. you are not familiar with the sorrow and coldness of the world, or you would remain here with her who feels and sympathizes with you! nothing is more terrible in its self-inflicted revenge than the determination to disregard the promptings of the heart in life." "i do not disregard them, charlotte, but the heart must not be the only axis on which my life revolves, and it would be, if i remained near you, you divine woman, to whom my heart and soul will ever lovingly incline, forgetting all else, and yet--i desire your friendship only!" as he said this he threw his arms around her, raised her up from the sofa, and covered her face with kisses. "oh, frederick, you are crying! i feel your tears falling on my forehead!" "be still, charlotte, be still, and--love me! for a single blissful moment love me, and let yourself be loved!" "i love you, frederick," she cried, passionately. "you fill my soul with anguish and delight, alternately. you love as i do! only love alarms you; you will not accord to a mortal that which is divinely beautiful! oh, schiller, the essence of divinity is within us; then wherefore should our love not be divinely beautiful, joyfully renouncing hope and desire in humility and resignation?" he did not reply, but only drew her closer to his heart, bowed down his head on her shoulder, and sobbed. the silence which now reigned in the dark room was unbroken save by the sobs of the weeping lovers. after a long and painful pause, schiller raised her head and withdrew his arms from charlotte's figure. "let us have light," said he, and his voice now had a harsh sound--"light, that i may once more see your beloved countenance before i leave!" "no, frederick, when you leave, i will no longer require light; a cheerless life is more endurable in the dark. no light! let us part in darkness, for in darkness i am doomed to grope my way hereafter, but the light of your countenance will always be reflected in my soul. good-night, frederick! you take with you all that is dear to me, even my beautiful dreams. the most lovely visions have heretofore surrounded my bed at night; but now they will follow you, for they came from you, and were the thoughts of your soul. your thoughts fly from me, and my dreams follow them. you rob my day of its sun, and my night of its dream. let us therefore separate in darkness!" "charlotte," said he, deeply agitated, "your words sound like tones from a spirit-world, and the past seems already to be leaving me! oh, do not go; stay with me, sweet past, happy present! stay with me, soul of my soul, beloved being! where are you, charlotte--where are you?" she did not reply. longingly he stretched out his arms toward her, but did not find her; he found empty space only. "charlotte, come for the last time to my heart! come!--let me inhale from your lips the atmosphere of paradise!" no reply. he seemed to see a shadow flit through the darkness, and then the words, "good-night, schiller!" struck his ear like the low, vibrating tones of an æolian harp. the noise of an opening and closing door could be heard, and then all was still. a groan escaped schiller's breast; he felt that charlotte had left him--that he was alone. for a moment he stood still and listened, hoping she would return; but the silence remained unbroken. "ah," murmured schiller, "parting is like death! ah, charlotte, i have loved you dearly! i--be still, my heart, no more complaints! it must be so!" he turned slowly and walked toward the door. "farewell, charlotte, farewell!" no reply. it seemed to be only the echo which responded from out the dark space, "farewell!" schiller opened the door and rushed out into the still night, and through the lonely streets, unconscious that he was bareheaded, oblivious of having left his hat in charlotte's room. he rushed on, heedless of the raw night air and cutting wind. at length he was aroused by the heavy drops of rain which were falling on his forehead. the cold rain awakened him from a last painful struggle with his passion, and cooled his head and heart at the same time. "o god, i thank thee for sending down the waters of heaven to cleanse my heart from passion and slavish love, and making me free again! and now i am free!--am once more myself! am free!" schiller entered streicher's apartment with a cheerful countenance, and greeted his friend heartily; but andrew regarded his wet clothing and dripping hair with dismay. "where in the world do you come from, fritz? you look as if you had been paying the maid of the rhine a visit, and had just escaped from her moist embrace!" "you are, perhaps, right, andrew! i have just taken leave of the fair maid who had bewitched me." "but what have you done with your hat, fritz? did you leave it with the maid as a souvenir?" "you are, perhaps, right again, andrew. i left my hat with the maid as a souvenir, and only succeeded in slipping my head out of the noose." "be kind enough to speak sensibly," said streicher, "and tell me where your hat is." "i have told you already i left it with the maid of the rhine as a souvenir." "i wish you had not done so," said andrew, in grumbling tones. "you had better have left her a lock of your yellow hair; that would have been cheaper, for hair grows again, but hats must be bought. well, fortunately i happened to buy a new hat to-day, and that you must take, of course." he handed schiller a brand-new beaver hat, telling him to dry his disordered locks and try it on. "andrew," said schiller, after having tried the hat on, and found that it fitted him perfectly. "andrew, you bought this hat for yourself to-day?" "yes, for myself, of course, but you, wild fellow, come running here bareheaded, and no resource is left but to put my beaver on your head." "come here, andrew," said schiller, smiling, and when he came up, schiller placed the hat on the little bald head and pressed it down over his friend's eyes, making streicher a very ludicrous object. schiller, however, did not laugh, but slowly lifted the hat up, and looked lovingly into the abashed and mortified countenance of his friend. "andrew, i would never have believed that you knew how to tell an untruth!" "and you see i acquitted myself badly enough," growled streicher. "and bad enough it is that you should compel an honest man to tamper with the truth. your hat had seen much service and well deserved a substitute, but if i had had the presumption to offer you a new one what a scene there would have been! so i thought i would exchange hats with you at the last moment, after you had entered the stage-coach. and i would have done so, had you not burst in upon me without a hat, and given me what i considered a fine opportunity to make you my trifling present." "it is no trifling present, andrew, but a magnificent one. i accept your hat, and i thank you. i will wear it for the present instead of the laurel-wreath which the german nation is on the point of twining for my brow, but which will probably not be quite ready until my head has long since been laid under the sod; for the manufacture of laurel-wreaths progresses but slowly in germany; and i sometimes think my life is progressing very rapidly, andrew, and that i have but little time left to work for immortality. but we must not make ourselves sad by such reflections. i thank you for your present, my friend, and am contented that you should adorn my head with a hat. yes, when i consider the matter, andrew, a hat is a far better and more respectable covering for a german head than a laurel-wreath. in our bleak, northern climate, laurels are only good to season carps with, and a sensible german had far better wish for a good hat than a laurel-wreath. yes, far better, and we will drink a toast to this sentiment, andrew. you invited me to a bowl of punch; out with your punch, you good, jolly fellow! we will raise our glasses and drink to a future crowned with beaver hats! your punch, andrew!" andrew hurried to bring from the warm stove the little, covered bowl of punch, carefully prepared according to all the rules of the art. the two friends seated themselves at the little table on which the steaming bowl had been placed, and filled their glasses. "raise your glass, andrew; 'long live the beaver! destruction to the laurel!'" "no, fritz, i will not drink such a toast with you," said streicher, slowly setting his glass down. "it would be a sin and a crime for frederick schiller to drink so unworthy, so miserable a toast. you are in your desperate humor again to-day, fritz, and would like to invoke the very lightning from heaven, and concoct with its aid a little tornado in your own heaven." "yes, of course, you droll fellow!" cried schiller, emptying his glass at one draught. "lightning purifies the atmosphere and brings the sun out again. and you see my departure is a mighty tornado, with showers of rain, with thunder and lightning, intended, no doubt, to cleanse and purify my life, that it may afterward flow on through the sunshine, clear and limpid. andrew, i go from here to seek happiness and peace." "and, above all, renown," added streicher, emptying his glass. "no," cried schiller, vehemently, "no renown for me! translated into good german, renown means thorns, hunger, want! i intend to have my portion of the viands with which the table of life is richly provided. and do you know what my purpose is?" "no, but i should like to learn it." "i intend to become a jurist," cried schiller, emptying his second glass. "yes, that is it. i will begin a new life and make a jurist of myself. my old life is ended, and when i enter the stage-coach to-night to go to leipsic, it will not contain the poet schiller, the author of 'the robbers,' and other absurdities, but the student, frederick schiller, on his way to leipsic to study jurisprudence at the university. don't shake your wise head and look so horrified, andrew. i tell you i will become a jurist; i am tired of journeying on the thorny path of the poet, with bleeding feet and a hungry stomach. all my illusions are vanished. my vision of a golden meteor sparkling in the sun, proves to have been only a soap-bubble; and this bubble called renown has now bursted." "you are again talking wildly and romantically, like charles moor, in 'the robbers,'" cried streicher; "and yet you are not in earnest!" "but i am in earnest, my friend! the sad experience of my past life has made me wise and practical. i will not discard poetry altogether, but will indulge in it at times only, as one indulges in oysters and champagne on great and festive occasions. my ordinary life will be that of a jurist. i have given the matter much thought and consideration. fortunately, i have a clear head and quick comprehension, i will, therefore, with a firm will and untiring diligence, study and learn as much in one year as others do in three. the university in leipsic is rich in resources, and i will know how to avail myself of them. if an ordinary head, by ordinary application, can acquire in three years sufficient knowledge to enable a man to earn a comfortable living in the practice of his profession, i can certainly attain the same end in a shorter time. my attention has been directed to the study of systems since my earliest youth; and in our charles school, of blessed memory, i have at least learned to express myself as fluently in latin as in german. study, thought, and reflection, is a delight to me, and the explication of difficult subjects a pleasure; and, therefore, i am convinced that i can become a good jurist, and, with bold strides, swiftly overtake the snail-moving pace of others, and in a brief time attain that which the most sanguine would scarcely imagine could be achieved in years." "then you, at least, admit that you are no ordinary man," said andrew streicher, shrugging his shoulders. "and, nevertheless, you propose to confine this extraordinary man in the strait-jacket of practical science. truly, i lose my appetite, and even this punch seems sour, when i reflect that the poet of 'the robbers' is to become an advocate!" "you had rather he hungered, and wrote dramas, than he should lead a happy and comfortable life, and write deeds. ah, my friend, the career of a poet is full of bitterness and humiliation. the wise and sensible shrug their shoulders when mention is made of him, as though he were a crazy fool; the so-called gentlefolk do not recognize him as their equal, and even the players on the stage act as though they conferred a favor on the poet when they render his dramas, and, as they say, give life to inanimate forms by their sublime impersonations. no, no, my mind is made up, i will write no more stage pieces, at least until i have achieved a respectable position in the world as a jurist. man must always push on and possess the ambition which leads higher and higher. are not you, too, ambitious, andrew?" "of course, i am, and will strive with all my might to obtain my ideal, and become the leader of an orchestra." "and i, andrew, i will become a minister," cried schiller, with enthusiasm. "yes, that is my ideal!--minister of a little state--to devote my whole life, my thought, and being, to the happiness of mankind, to be a benefactor to the poor and oppressed, to advance men of talent and science, to promote the good and useful, to cultivate the beautiful. this, andrew, is my ideal; and this is attained if i succeed in becoming a good jurist and a minister at one of our dear little saxon courts. yes, my friend, thus it shall be! you, an orchestra-leader--i, a minister! let us arise with our foaming glasses, and shake hands over it. let this be our last toast, and our final compact: 'we will neither write to, nor visit each other, until andrew streicher is the orchestra-leader, and frederick schiller the minister.'"[13] "so let it be," cried andrew, laughing. "hurrah, the orchestra-leader! hurrah, the minister!" they raised their glasses exultingly, and emptied them. they then gave each other one last embrace. the hour of departure and parting had come. andrew accompanied his friend in silence through the deserted streets of the slumbering city, to the post-office, where the coach stood awaiting the passengers. a last pressure of the hand, a last loving look, and the coach rolled on, and carried into the world the "new cæsar and his fortunes!" chapter ix. the last ride. years, when we look back at them in the past, are but as fleeting moments; when we look forward to them in the future, they are eternities! how long was the year from the spring of 1785 to the spring of 1786 to be for young frederick schiller, who looked forward to it with so much hope and so many beautiful dreams! how long was the same year to be for old frederick, for the old philosopher of sans-souci, who grew day by day more hopeless, in whose ear was daily whispered the awful tidings, "you must die!" he did not close his ear to these mutterings of age and decrepitude, nor did he fear death. for him life had been a great battle--a continuous conflict. he had ever faced death bravely, and had fought gallantly against all sorts of enemies; and truly the worst and most dangerous among them were not those who opposed him with visible weapons, and on the real battle-field. it had been far more difficult to contend with folly, malice, envy, and prejudices--to pursue his conquering course regardless of the cries of the foolish and the calumnies of the ungrateful. it is easier to conquer on the field of battle than to combat prejudices, than to extirpate abuses. and, after the days of real battles were over, frederick was compelled to wage incessant war against these evils. the one great and holy aim of his life was to make his people happy and respected, rich and powerful; and with all the energy and strength of which he was capable he strove to accomplish these ends, never permitting himself to be confounded or dismayed by malice and ingratitude. commerce flourished under his rule--the fruits of prussian industry found a market in the most distant lands. barren lands had been made fertile. the soldiers of war had become the soldiers of peace, who were now warring for the prosperity of the people. this warfare was certainly at times a little severe, and the good and useful had to be introduced by force. but what of that? were potatoes less nutritious, because the peasants of silesia were driven into the field by armed soldiers, and compelled to plant this vegetable? did it not become a great favorite with the people, notwithstanding their resistance to its introduction in the beginning? were not vast sums of money retained in the land by the cultivation of this vegetable, which would otherwise have been used to purchase rice and other grains in foreign countries? had not the king succeeded in introducing the silkworm into his dominions? had not the manufacture of woollen goods been greatly promoted by the adoption of a better system of raising sheep? but frederick had not only fostered agriculture and industry, he had also evinced the liveliest sympathy for the arts and sciences. scholars and artists were called to his court, and every assistance was rendered them. universities and academies were endowed. but, while looking to the internal welfare of his kingdom, his gaze was ever fastened on austria, the hereditary enemy of prussia. he did not permit the house of hapsburg to stretch out its rapacious hands after german lands. looking to the future, and contemplating his death, he endeavored to secure his kingdom against the hapsburgs beyond the time when he should be no more. this was evinced by frederick's last political act--the formation of the "union of princes"--the prussian king's last defiance to austria. this "union of princes" was a confederation of german princes against rapacious, grasping austria. it united all against one, and made the one the enemy of all. the intention and object of this union was to assist and protect each state against the common enemy, to tolerate no trespass on the rights of any one of them, to revenge a wrong done to the smallest member of the union, as if it had been perpetrated on the greatest. moreover, the welfare of the german people was to be duly considered and promoted, the constitution maintained, and no violation of its requirements to be tolerated. this "union of princes" was determined upon, and carried into effect, between prussia and all the other german states, except austria, and other states whose sovereigns were related to the hapsburgs. this union was frederick's last political act! against austria he had first drawn his sword as a young king, and against austria this, his last blow, was directed in uniting germany, and making it strong in unity, and free in strength! he had sown the seed destined to bear rich fruit, but he was not to be permitted to reap the harvest. his life was drawing to a close; and the poor, decrepit body reminded the strong and active mind that it would soon leave its prison, and soar to heaven, or into illimitable space! but frederick wished to serve his people to the last moment. as long as he could still move his hands, they should work for the welfare of his kingdom. as long as his intellect remained clear and active, he would continue to work. at times, however, bodily pain clouded his understanding, and made him peevish and irritable. to have occupied himself with matters of state at such times would have been dangerous, as his physical condition might have affected the decisions he was called upon to make. in his paternal solicitude for the welfare of his people, frederick gave this subject due consideration, and endeavored to render his bodily afflictions harmless. there were several hours in which he suffered but little from the gout and the asthma, and these were in the early morning, when he felt refreshed after having slept for one or two hours. one or two hours' sleep! this was all nature accorded the royal invalid, who had watched over prussia's honor for half a century, and whose eyes were now weary, and longed for slumber and repose. but the king bore this affliction with the patience of a sage--he could even jest about it. "my dear duke," said he to the duke of courland, who paid him a visit in june, 1786, "if, on your return to courland, you should hear of a vacancy among the night-watchmen, i beg of you to reserve the place for me, for, i assure you, i have learned the art of watching at night thoroughly." but he wished to employ his hours of wakefulness in the night for the good of his people, and ordered that the members of his cabinet, who had been in the habit of coming to his room with their reports at seven o'clock in the morning, should now assemble there at four. "my condition," said the king, when he acquainted the three members of his cabinet with his desire, "my condition necessitates my giving you this trouble, but it will be of short duration. my life is on the decline, and i must make the most of the time which is still allotted me. it does not belong to me, but to the state."[14] yes, his life was on the decline; but for a long time his heroic mind found strength to overcome the weakness of the body. at times, when the physicians supposed his strength was entirely exhausted, and that the poor, worn-out figure sitting out on the terrace under the burning july sun, and yet trembling with cold, would soon be nothing more than the empty tenement of the departed soul, he would gather the energies of his strong and fiery mind together, and contend successfully with the weakness of the body. thus it was in the month of april, when his physicians believed him to be at the point of death. he suddenly recovered one morning, after a refreshing slumber, arose from his bed, dressed himself, and walked with a firm step down the stairway to the carriage, which he had ordered to be held in readiness to drive him out; he entered the carriage, but not with the intention of returning to the palace of potsdam, but to drive to his dear sans-souci, to take up his residence there for the summer. and thus it was to-day, on the fourth of july, when the king, who had passed the day before in great pain and distress, felt wonderfully refreshed and restored on awaking. he sent for the members of his cabinet at four o'clock in the morning, and worked with them until eight, dictating dispatches and lengthy administrative documents, which bore witness to the vigor of his mind. at eight o'clock he desired that his friends should pay him a visit, and conversed with them as gayly and wittily as in the long-gone-by days of unbroken health. he laughed and jested about his own weakness and decrepitude so amiably, that count lucchesini could not refrain from giving utterance to his delight, and hailing the king as a convalescent. "my dear count," said frederick, shrugging his shoulders, "you are right; i will soon be well, but in another sense than the one you mean. you take the last flare of the lamp for a steady flame. my dear count, darkness will soon convince you that you are wrong. but i will profit by this transient light, and will persuade myself that i am well. gentlemen, with your leave i will avail myself of the bright sunshine and take a ride. order condé to be saddled." "but, sire!" cried lucchesini, in dismay. a glance from frederick silenced the count. "sir," said he, severely, "while i still live, i must be addressed with no 'buts.'" the count bowed in silence, and followed the other two gentlemen who were leaving the room. frederick followed his favorite with a look of lively sympathy, and, as lucchesini was about to cross the threshold, called him back. the count turned quickly, and walked back to the king. frederick raised his hand and pointed to the window through which the sunshine and green foliage of the trees could be seen. "look how beautiful that is, lucchesini! do you not consider this a fine summer day?" "yes, sire, a very fine summer day; but it is to be hoped we shall have many more such; and if your majesty would be quiet for the next few days, you would, with increased strength, be better able to enjoy them." "and yet i will carry out my intention, you obstinate fellow," exclaimed the king, smiling. "but i tell you i will never recover, and i have a question to ask. if you had lived together with intimate friends for long years, and were compelled to take your departure and leave them, would you not desire to bid them adieu, and say to them, 'farewell! i thank you!' or would you leave your friends like a thief in the night, without a word of greeting?" "no, sire, that i would certainly not do," replied lucchesini. "i would throw my arms around my friend's neck, and take leave of him with tears and kisses." "now, you see," said frederick, gently, "the trees of my garden are also my friends, and i wish to take leave of them. be still, not a word! i am old, and the young must yield to the old. i have no fear of death. in order to understand life rightly, one must see men entering and leaving the world.[15] it is all only a change, and the sun shines at the same time on many cradles and many graves. do not look at me so sadly, but believe me when i say that i am perfectly willing to leave the stage of life." and, raising his head, the king declaimed in a loud, firm voice: "oui, finissons sans trouble et mourons sans regrets, en laissant l'univers comblé de nos bienfaits. ainsi l'astre du jour au bout de sa carrière, repand sur l'horizon une douce lumière, et ses derniers rayons qu'il darde dans les airs sont ses derniers soupirs qu'il donne à l'univers." he extended his hand to the count with a smile, and, when the latter bowed down to kiss it, a tear fell from his eyes on frederick's cold, bony hand. the king felt this warm tear, and shook his head gently. "you are a strange man, and a very extravagant one. the idea of throwing away brilliants on an old man's hand! it would be far better to keep them for handsome young people. now you may go, and i hope to find you well when i return from my ride." having intimated to the count, by a gesture of the hand, that he might withdraw, he turned slowly to his greyhound, alkmene, which lay on a chair near the sofa, regarding the king with sleepy eyes. "you are also growing old and weak, alkmene," said the king, in a low voice; "and your days will not be much longer in the land. we must both be up and doing if we wish to enjoy another ray of sunshine. come, alkmene, let us go and take an airing! come!" the greyhound sprang down from the chair and followed the king, who walked slowly to his chamber to prepare himself for the ride. a quarter of an hour later the king, assisted by his two valets, walked slowly through his apartments to the door which opened on the so-called green stairway, and at which his favorite horse, condé, stood awaiting him. the equerry and the chamberlain of the day stood on either side of the door, and at a short distance two servants held the horses of these gentlemen. the king's quick glance took in this scene at once, and he shook his head with displeasure. "no foolishness, no pomp!" said he, imperiously. "my servants alone will accompany me." the two gentlemen looked sadly at each other, but they dared make no opposition, and extended their hands to assist the king in mounting. but it was a difficult and sorrowful task to seat the king on his horse. deference prevented them from lifting him up, and the king's feebleness prevented him from mounting unaided. at last chairs and cushions were brought and piled up, until they formed a gradual ascent to the saddle-back, up which the two servants led the king, and succeeded in placing him on his horse. condé, as if conscious that perfect quiet was necessary to the successful carrying out of this experiment, remained immovable. but now that he was seated on the back of his favorite horse, condé threw his head high in the air and neighed loudly, as if to proclaim his joy at being once more together with the king. alkmene did not seem to relish being behind condé in manifesting joy, for she barked loudly and sprang gayly around the horse and rider, who had now taken the reins in his hand and started the sagacious animal by a slight pressure of the thigh. the king rode slowly down the green stairway, that is, a succession of green terraces forming a gentle declivity in the direction of sans-souci. as the grooms were on the point of following him the chamberlain stepped up to them. "take care to keep as near the king as possible, in order that you may be at hand if any thing should happen to his majesty." "his majesty's carriage shall be held in readiness at the obelisk," said the equerry, in a low voice. "if any thing should happen to the king, bring him there, and one of you must ride in full gallop to the physician sello!" the two grooms now hurried on after the king, who had put spurs to his horse and was galloping down the avenue. it was a beautiful day; a shower which had fallen the night before had made the air pure and fragrant, and washed the grass till it looked as soft and smooth as velvet. the king slackened his speed. he looked sadly around at the natural beauties which surrounded him, at the foliage of the trees, and up at the blue sky, which seemed to smile down upon him in cloudless serenity. "i will soon soar up to thee, and view thy glories and wonders! but i will first take leave of the glories of earth!" he slowly lowered his eyes and looked again at the earth, and inhaled its delicious atmosphere in deep draughts, feasted his eyes on nature, and listened to the music of the murmuring springs and plashing cascades, and of the birds singing in the dense foliage. he rode on through the solitary park, a solitary king, no one near him; the two lackeys behind in the distance, the greyhound bounding before him; but above him his god and his renown, and within him the recollections of the long years which had been! the friends who had wandered with him through these avenues, where were they? all dead and gone, and he would soon follow them! he had often longed for death; had often said to himself that it would be a great relief to lie down and sleep the eternal sleep of the grave. and yet he was now saddened to his inmost being. it seemed to him that the skies had never before been so bright, the trees so fresh and green, or the flowers so fragrant! why long for the peace of the grave! how delicious and refreshing was the peace of nature! with what rapture did the soul drink in the sunshine and the fragrance of flowers! "from the afflictions of the world i fly to thee, thou holy virgin, pure, chaste nature," said he, softly to himself. "men are but weak, miserable beings, and not worth living for; but, for thy sake, nature, i would still desire to live. thou hast been my only beloved on earth, and it is very painful to thy old lover to leave thee." yes, it was very painful. nature seemed to have put on festive garments to-day, in order to show herself to the departing king in all her magnificence and beauty. the king rode on slowly through the avenues of sans-souci, bidding adieu to each familiar scene. at times, when an opening in the trees offered a particularly fine view, he halted, and feasted his eyes on the lovely landscape, and then he would lower his gaze quickly again, because something hot had darkened his vision--it was perhaps a grain of sand thrown up by the wind, but certainly not a tear! no, certainly not! how could he weep, he who was so weary and sick of life? "yes, weary and sick of life," he said, in a loud voice. "men are such miserable beings, and i am weary of ruling over slaves!--weary of playing the tyrant, when i would so gladly see freemen around me! no, no, i do not regret that i must die, i leave willingly, and my countenance will wear a smile when i am carried to the grave."[16] it may be easy to take leave of men, but nature is so beautiful, it smiles so sweetly on us! it is very hard to have to say to the sky, the earth, and to the trees and flowers: "farewell! i will never see you more! farewell!" the trees and bushes rustle in the wind and seem to sigh, "farewell!" the falling waters seem to murmur, "nevermore!" ah, there is yet a little corner in the king's and hero's heart, which is merely human; a little nook to which wisdom and experience have not penetrated, where natural feeling reigns supreme. yes, man tears himself from beautiful nature reluctantly and sadly. he would like to gaze longer on the flowers, and trees, and shrubbery; to continue to breathe the fragrant air. but this man is also a hero and philosopher; and the hero whispers in his ear: "courage, be strong! you have often looked death in the face without flinching--do so now!" the philosopher whispers, "reconcile yourself to that which is inevitable. a town-clock is made of steel and iron, and yet it will not run more than twenty years. is it surprising that your body should be worn out after seventy years? rather rejoice that you are soon to read the great mysteries of creation, to know whether there is life beyond the grave, and whether we are again to be united with those who have gone before." "these mysteries i will solve," cried the king, in a loud voice. "i greet you, o dead with whom i have wandered in these shady groves. we shall soon meet again in the elysian fields, and i will bring you intelligence of this miserable earth and its miserable inhabitants. my mother, my sister, i greet you, and you cicero, cæsar, voltaire! i am coming to join the immortals." he raised his head and breathed freely, as if a heavy burden had fallen from his soul. his countenance was illumined with enthusiasm. he looked over toward sans-souci, which had just become visible through an opening in the trees; its windows shone lustrously in the bright sunshine, and the whole building glittered in the glorious light. "it is my tomb," he said, smiling, "and yet the cradle of my renown. if i knew that i could escape death by not returning to my house, i would still do so. i am willing to yield my body to death, and am now going home to die!" as he said this he slowly raised his arm and lifted his old three-cornered hat slightly, and bowed in every direction, as a king does when taking leave of his court. he then slowly replaced the hat on his thin white hair, and pressed condé so firmly with his knees, and drew in the reins so closely, that the animal galloped off rapidly. alkmene could only manage to keep up with great difficulty. the terrified lackeys urged their horses to a greater speed. this rapid ride did the king good, the keen wind seemed to strengthen his breast and dispel the clouds of melancholy from his soul. he had bidden his last adieu to nature. death was now vanquished, and the last painful sacrifice made. when the king, after a two hours' ride through the park of sans-souci, galloped up the green stairway on his return, the chamberlain and equerry were astonished and delighted to find that he had met with no accident, and was positively looking better and stronger than he had done for a long time. the king halted with a sudden jerk of the reins, and the lackeys rushed forward with chairs and cushions, to form a stairway for his easy descent, as before. but with a quick movement frederick waved them back. "nothing of the kind," said he. "i can dismount with the aid of your arm. i will, however, first rest a moment." he stroked condé's smooth, tapering neck, and the intelligent animal turned his head around, as if to look at his master and thank him for the caress. "yes, you know the hand that strokes you," said the king, smiling. "we two have taken many a ride, and gone through rain and sunshine together. farewell, my faithful condé." he had bowed down over the animal's neck to stroke its mane. when he raised his head, his quick, piercing eye observed a young officer coming over the terrace with an air of embarrassment; he hesitated and stood still, as if doubting whether he might be permitted to come nearer. "who can that be?" asked the king, gayly. "what young officer have we here?--come up, sir, and report." the young man hurried forward, stepped close up to the king's horse, and saluted him by raising his right hand to his cap. "i have the honor to report to your majesty," said he, in clear, joyous tones. "i have been ordered here at this hour, and punctuality is the first duty of the soldier." "well replied, sir," said the king. "give me your arm and assist me to dismount." the young officer hastened to obey the command, laid his hands on condé's neck, and stretched his arms out as firmly as if they had been made of iron and were capable of standing any pressure. the king grasped these living supports and slowly lowered himself from the horse's back to the ground. "well done, my nephew, you have a strong arm, and, for your fifteen years, are quite powerful." "sixteen years, your majesty," cried the young man, eagerly; "in four weeks i shall be sixteen years old." "ah, sixteen already!" replied frederick, smiling. "then you are almost a man, and must be treated with due consideration. mon prince, voulez-vous avoir la bonté de me donner votre bras?"[17] "sire, et mon roi," replied the prince, quickly, "vous me daignez d'un grand honneur, et je vous suis très reconnaissant!"[18] and after bowing deeply he offered his arm to the king. "just see how well he speaks french already!" said the king. "we will remain out here on the terrace for a few moments. the warm sunshine does an old man good! lead me, my prince." he pointed with his crutch to the arm-chair which stood near the open door of the saloon, and walked slowly across the terrace, supported by frederick william's arm. "here," said he, as he sank slowly into the chair, breathing heavily, "here i will repose once more in the warm, bright sunshine before i enter the dark house." he looked slowly around at the terraces and trees, and then his gaze fastened on the young prince, who stood near him with a stiff and formal military bearing. "lieutenant, forget for a few moments that you are before the king. you are at liberty to dispense with military etiquette. and now give me your hand, my son, and let your old uncle offer you a right hearty welcome." the prince pressed the hand which he extended respectfully to his lips. "seat yourself," said the king, pointing to a stool which stood near his chair. and, when the prince had done as he bade him, he looked long and earnestly into his fresh, open face. "i sent for you, my child," said frederick, in a soft and tender tone, "because i wished to see you once more before i set out on my journey." "your majesty is then about to travel," said the prince naïvely. "yes, i am about to travel," replied frederick, bowing his head gently. "but, your majesty, i thought the grand man[oe]uvres were to be held at potsdam this time." "yes, the grand man[oe]uvres will be held in potsdam; and, at the grand review, i will have to report to him who is the king of kings. why do you look so awe-struck, my son? perhaps it has never occurred to you that men are compelled to leave this paradise to die!" "your majesty, i had never thought seriously of death!" "and you were perfectly right in not doing so, my child," said frederick, and his voice had now regained its firmness. "your attention must be firmly and immovably directed to life, for a great deal will be required of you on earth, and with your whole mind and strength you must endeavor to respond to these demands. you must study very diligently and make yourself familiar with the sciences. which is your favorite study?" "history, sire." "that is well, fritz. impress upon your mind the great events of history, and learn, by studying the heroic deeds of kings, to be a hero yourself. above all, your aims must be great, and you must struggle to attain them throughout your entire life. who is your favorite hero in history?" "sire," replied the prince, after a little reflection, "my favorite hero is cosmo de medici." the king looked at him in astonishment. "what do you know of him?" said he. "who was this cosmo de medici?" "he was a great general," replied the prince, "and a great lawgiver, and his sole endeavor was to make the people happy." "then you believe the chief aim of a great man, of a prince, should always be to make his people happy?" "yes, sire, his chief aim. professor behnisch once told me, in the history lesson of the great cosmo de medici, called by the people of florence the 'benefactor of the people.' when he felt that his end was approaching, he commanded that he should be carried out in his chair to the largest square in florence, 'for,' said he, 'i desire to die like a tender and happy father in the midst of his children.' but the children he spoke of were his subjects, who now poured into the square from all sides, and filled it so closely that it looked like a vast sea of humanity. when no more room could be found on the square, the people pressed into the houses, the doors of which had all been thrown open; and from the edifices which surrounded the square, thousands upon thousands looked down from the windows. tens of thousands stood on the square, in the centre of which, and on an elevation, the chair, with the dying prince, had been placed. yet, although so many inhabitants had assembled there, profound silence reigned. no one moved, and the eyes of all were fixed on the countenance of the dying prince. but he smiled, looked around at the vast concourse, and cried in a loud voice. 'as my last hour has come, i wish to make peace with god and men. therefore, if there be any one among you to whom i have done injustice, or any one who can complain of any injustice done him under my rule, i beg that he will now step forward and call me to account, in order that i may mete out justice to him before i die! speak, therefore, in the name of god. i command you to speak.' but no one came forward, and nothing was heard but the low sobs of the people. for the second time the prince asked: 'if there be any one among you to whom i have done injustice, let him come forward quickly, for death approaches!' and a loud voice from among the people cried: 'you have done nothing but good, you have been our benefactor and our father. you will cause us a pang, for the first time, when you leave us; we therefore implore, o father, do not leave your children!' and from the vast square and the windows of the circle of houses, resounded the imploring cry of thousands upon thousands: 'o father, do not leave your children!' the countenance of the prince was radiant with joy, as he listened to the imploring cry and the sobs of his people. 'this is a prince's sublimest requiem,' said he. 'happy is that prince who can die in the midst of the tears and blessings of his people!' and when he had said this, he arose and extended his arms, as if to give them his benediction. the whole multitude sank, sobbing, on their knees. and cosmo fell back into his chair. he had died in the midst of the tears and blessings of his people." the prince's voice had faltered, and his eyes filled with tears, while concluding his narrative, and he now looked timidly at his uncle, who had regarded him intently throughout. the eyes of the venerable old man and the youth met, and their hearts seemed to commune with each other also, for they both smiled. "and you would like to die such a death, my son?" asked frederick in a soft voice. "die like cosmo de medici, in the midst of the tears and blessings of his people?" "yes, sire, may such a death be mine!" replied the prince, earnestly; "and i swear to your majesty that if i should ever become king, my sole aim shall be the happiness of my people. i will always think of you, and remember your deeds and your words. yesterday my new instructor, mr. leuchsenring, also told me something very beautiful. he told me that your majesty worked day and night for the welfare of your people, and that you had said: 'a king is only the first office-holder of his people!' and that pleased me so well that i have determined to make it the motto of my life." "very good," said the king, shaking his head, "keep this motto in your heart, but do not speak of it while you are not yet king, or it might cause you some inconvenience. be careful how you speak of me when i am gone, and impress this lesson on your memory. a prince royal must never criticise the actions of the ruling king. he must be modest and silent, and give the people an example of an obedient and loyal subject, even if the king should do many things that do not please him. i repeat it,--a prince royal must observe and learn in silence. never forget this, my son, and adopt this as another rule for your entire life. a good king must never devote too much of his attention to women and favorites, or allow them to influence him, for when he does, it is always to the prejudice of his people's interests, and to his own discredit. i desire to say nothing more on this subject, but remember my words." "i will do so, sire," replied the prince, earnestly. "i will repeat these beautiful lessons daily, morning and evening, but noiselessly, that none may hear them." "well said, my nephew; but let us see how you stand in other respects. put your hand in my coat-pocket, and take out a little book. i brought it with me in order that you might read something out of it for my benefit. have you found it?" "yes, sire, i have. it is the 'fables of la fontaine.'" "that is it! now open the book at random. at what fable did you chance to open it?" "le renard et le corbeau."[19] "now first read the fable in french, and then let me hear you translate it." the prince first read the fable with fluency and a correct pronunciation in the original language, and then rendered it with the same fluency and correctness in the german. the king listened attentively, often inclining his head in commendation, and murmuring, at times, "bravo, superb!" he extended his hand to the prince when he had finished, and looked at him tenderly. "i am proud of you, fritz," he cried, "and you shall be rewarded for your diligence. report to my chamberlain before you go, and he will give you ten fredericks d'or. that is your reward for your impromptu translation." "no, i thank you," said the prince; "i do not deserve this reward, and consequently cannot accept it." "what! you do not deserve it? and why not?" "because it was not an impromptu translation; if it had been, it would not have been any thing like as good. by accident i opened the book at the same fable i had been translating yesterday and the day before with my instructor, and of course it was easily done the second time." the king gazed long and thoughtfully at frederick william's handsome and innocent young face, his countenance brightening and his eye glistening with pleasure. he bowed down and stroked his cheek fondly with his trembling hand. "bravely said, my son; that pleases me. you have an honest and sincere heart. that is right. never appear to be more than you are, but always be more than you seem to be.[20] the reward i promised you you shall have, nevertheless, for a king must always keep his promise. a king may never recall a favor once granted, however undeserving the recipient. but this is not the case with you, for you have really made great progress in your french. continue to do so, and be very diligent, for you must speak the french language as readily as your own, and for this reason you should always speak french with your associates." "and i do," cried the prince with alacrity. "my instructors always speak french with me, and are very angry when they hear my brother and myself speaking a word of german together. i often pass whole days without speaking a single word of german, and our valet speaks french only."[21] "i am glad to hear it, fritz! the french language is the language of diplomacy throughout the world, and it is also best adapted to it on account of its flexibility. i love the french language, but not the french people. i think matters are taking a dangerous course in france, and that there will be trouble there before long. i will not live to see it, but the crater will open and cast its abominable streams of lava over all europe. prepare yourself for this time, my son. arm and equip yourself! be firm, and think of me. guard our honor and renown! perpetrate no wrongs, and tolerate none. be just and mild with all your subjects, and severe with yourself only." "i will be as severe with myself as professor behnisch is with me now," said the prince, earnestly. "i will give myself no immunity; but when i have done something wrong, i will prescribe a punishment for the offence." "is your professor so severe?" asked the king, smiling. "ah, yes, your majesty, very severe. a punishment follows in the train of every offence, and if i have only been the least bit rude or angry i must suffer for it at once." "that is as it should be," said the king. "your professor is entirely right. above all things, a prince must be polite, and have control over himself. but in what do the punishments he inflicts consist?" "always in just such things as are most disagreeable: either, instead of taking a walk, i must stay at home and work, or my brother is left at home, and i am compelled to walk with the professor alone, and then we have nothing but learned conversations. or, when i have not been diligent during the week, i am not permitted to visit my mother on sunday and dine with her in the palace. your majesty knows that we, my brother and myself, do not live in the palace, but with professor behnisch and mr. leuchsenring in broad street. our table is, however, very bad, and for that reason i always look forward to the coming sunday with pleasure, for then i eat, as it were, for the whole week. during the week, however, our fare is horrible; and when i dare to complain, the invariable rejoinder is, 'we have no money to keep a better table.'" "and that is the truth," said frederick, severely. "we should learn to stretch ourselves according to our cover at an early day, and to be economical with money. moreover, that you do not suffer hunger is quite evident from your fresh, rosy cheeks, and vigorous body. you must eat your daily bread with a merry face, my son, and make no complaints. young people should be entirely indifferent as to the quality of their food; the indulgences of the table are a solace of old age; youth should despise them; and a good apple ought to be as great a feast for a young man as a pineapple for an old fellow. in later years, when seated at a richly-laden table, you will certainly look back with pleasure to the time when you rejoiced in an approaching sunday because you fared better on that day than on any other. my son, by suffering want, we first learn how to enjoy; and he only is wise who can find enjoyment in poverty. i hope that at some future day you will be a great, a wise, and an economical king, and for this reason i have instructed those who have charge of you to bring you up plainly, and to teach you, above all things, economy in money matters. for you must know that you have nothing of your own, and that the people are now supporting you; and, for the present, not on account of your services, but solely because you are a scion of your house." "sire," cried the prince, with vivacity, "sire, i am very young, and, of course, have not been able to do any service as yet; but i promise your majesty that i will become a useful man, and, above all, a fine soldier, and will make myself worthy of being the nephew of frederick the great." "do that, my son, make yourself worthy to be the king of your people; and bear in mind the beautiful history of the death of cosmo de medici, which you have just narrated. and now, my son, we must part. the sun is setting, and i feel a little tired, and will go to my apartments." "ah, every thing is so beautiful and magnificent here, and your majesty has made me so happy by permitting me to see you!" "yes," murmured the king, "the world is very beautiful." he looked longingly around over the terraces and trees, and his gaze was arrested by the peak of the obelisk, which stood at the entrance of the garden, and towered high above the trees. he raised his hand, and pointed to the peak. "see, my son, how this peak overtops every thing else. although high and slender, it stands firm in storm and tempest. this pyramid says to you, 'ma force est ma droiture.' the culminating point of the pyramid overlooks and crowns the whole. it does not support, but is supported by all that lies under it, and chiefly by the invisible foundation, built far beneath. my son, thus it is also with the state. the supporting foundation is the people, and the peak of the obelisk is the king. acquire the love and confidence of the people, this only will enable you to become powerful and happy. and now, my son, come to my heart and receive a parting kiss from your old king. be good, and do only what is right! make your people happy, in order that you may be happy yourself." he drew the prince, who had knelt down before him, to his heart, pressed a kiss on his lips, and laid his cold, trembling hand on frederick william's head for a moment, as if to bless him. "and now arise, my child," said he lovingly. "do not forget this hour." "sire it shall never be forgotten," whispered the prince, sobbing loudly, and covering the king's hand with tears and kisses. "call the lackeys," murmured the king, as he fell back in his chair, exhausted. "let them carry me in." the prince hurriedly summoned the servants; and they raised the chair in which frederick lay with closed eyes. for a moment only he opened his eyes to look at the prince, and to wave him a last greeting with his hand. his eyelids closed again, and the king was carried into his "dark house" and into the library. after setting the chair down, the lackeys stepped noiselessly out of the room, believing the king to be asleep. frederick opened his eyes, and looking around at the busts of his great ancestors, saluted them with a motion of the hand. "all is finished," he said, loudly. "i have seen my garden for the last time, and have taken leave of nature. when my body leaves this house again, it will be borne to eternal rest, but my spirit will fly to you, my friends, and roam with you in endless light and knowledge. i am coming soon. but," he continued, elevating his voice, and speaking in firmer tones, "my sun has not yet set, and as long as it is still day i must and will work!" he rang the bell, and told the servant to send minister von herzberg (who, at the king's request, had been sojourning at sans-souci for the last few weeks,) to his presence at once. frederick received the minister with a cordial smile, and worked with him, in erect composure of mind and clearness of intellect, for several hours, listened to his report, gave his decisions, and dictated in a firm voice several dispatches to the ambassadors of france and russia. "herzberg, have these papers drawn up at once," said he, as he dismissed the minister. "the members of the cabinet must present them for my signature to-day, in order that they may be forwarded at the earliest moment. i must deal sparingly with my time, and employ each moment, for the next may not be mine." "oh, sire, it is to be hoped that you will still have years to devote to the happiness of your people, and--" "do you suppose i desire it?" exclaimed frederick, interrupting him. "no, i am weary, and long to rest from the troubles and cares of life. you think i do not feel them, because i do not complain. but you must know that some things are only endurable when not complained of. my account with life is balanced, and, although it gave me some laurels, yet the thorns predominated, and there was scarcely a single rose among them. be still! no complaints! but listen! i believe my end is approaching--already perhaps death lies in wait at my door--and i have something to say to you. madness and misrule will be the order of the day when i am gone, mistresses and favorites will reign, and hypocrites and impostors will practise iniquity under guise of piety. well, this you cannot prevent; and if the lord should see fit to let it come to pass, you must bear it as you best can. but when the spendthrifts attack the treasury, when they begin to squander the money i have saved with so much trouble, for the amelioration of the country, on their mistresses and favorites, you must not tolerate it. you must speak to the king's conscience in my name, and endeavor to persuade him, with good and bad words, to consult his people's interests, and not lavish on his favorites what belongs to the state. will you promise to do this?" "yes. i promise your majesty that i will do so," replied herzberg, solemnly. "i swear that i will faithfully and fearlessly obey the commands of my great and beloved king; that i will repeat to your successor the words your majesty has just spoken, if occasion should require; and that i will do all that lies in my power to prevent the expenditure of the state treasure for any other purpose than that of the welfare of the people and country." "i thank you," said the king; "you have relieved my mind of a great burden. give me your hand, herzberg, and let me thank you once more. you have been a faithful servant to your king, and you will continue to serve him when he has long since passed away. and now, farewell for the present, herzberg; i desire to sleep a little. a cabinet meeting will be held here at eight o'clock this evening." "but, sire, would it not be better if your majesty rested to-day, or else called the meeting at once, in order that you might retire to your repose earlier?" the king shrugged his shoulders. "there is no repose, except in the grave; and sleep is for the healthy only." and, even after they had left him, the king remained sitting at his writing-desk, and arranged his papers, and wrote a letter to his sister, the duchess of braunschweig. the two lackeys stood in the antechamber, awaiting the summons of the king's bell, and whispering to each other that his majesty was again sitting up, and working at a very late hour, although his physician had expressly forbidden him to do so. and yet neither of them dared to enter and disturb him in his labors; they stood hesitating and casting anxious glances at the door. but, behind this door, in the king's room, two eyes were regarding him intently; these were the eyes of his greyhound, alkmene. twice had the animal already jumped up from its bed, ran to the king, and nestled caressingly at his side, and had then, when frederick took no notice of it, hung its head and gone mournfully back to its cushion. it now raised its tapering head, and looked intelligently at the king, who sat writing at the table, his back turned toward the little dog. suddenly it bounded across the room, sprang upon the king's chair, laid its slender forefeet on its master's shoulder, bent its graceful neck downward, snatched the king's pen from his hand, and jumped down to the floor with it. "be quiet, alkmene," cried the king, without looking up from his work, in which he was entirely absorbed. "no nonsense, mademoiselle!" and the king took another pen from the stand. alkmene let the pen fall, and looked up at the king intently. when she saw that he continued writing, she uttered a low, plaintive whine. with one bound she was again on the back of the king's chair. supporting her feet on his shoulder, she snatched the pen from his hand a second time, and jumped down with it. this time she did not let the pen fall, but held it in her mouth, and remained near the king's chair, looking up to him with her sparkling eyes. frederick looked down from his work at the little animal, and a smile flitted over his features. "really," said he, in a low voice, "i believe alkmene wishes to remind me that it is time to go to bed. well, come here, mademoiselle, i will grant your desire!" as if understanding her master's words, alkmene barked joyously, and jumped into the king's lap. the king pressed the little greyhound to his breast, and caressed it tenderly. "my friends have not all deserted me," he murmured. "i shall probably have a smiling heir, but, when my body is carried to the grave, my dog at least will remain there to weep over me." he pressed the greyhound closer to his breast; deep silence reigned in the room. the wind howled dismally through the trees in the garden; a sudden blast dashed some fallen twigs against the low window, in front of which frederick worked, and it sounded as if ghostly hands were knocking there. the wind whispered and murmured as if the voices of the night and the spirits of the flowers and the trees wished to bring the king a greeting. suddenly alkmene uttered a long, distressful howl, and ran to the door, and scratched and whined until the servants took heart and entered the room. the king lay groaning in his arm-chair, his eyes glazed, and blood flowing from his pale lips. his physician and a surgeon were summoned at once, and the king was bled and his forehead rubbed with strengthening salts. he awoke once more to life and its torments; and for a few weeks the heroic mind conquered death and bodily decrepitude. but the ride on condé on the fourth of july was nevertheless his last. after that day frederick never left his "dark house." when the king of the desert, when the lion feels that his end is approaching, he goes to the forest, seeks the densest jungle and profoundest solitude, and lies down to die. nature has ordained that no one shall desecrate by his presence the last death-agony of the king of the desert. his sans-souci was the great king's holy and solitary retreat; and there it was that the hero and king breathed his last sigh on earth, without murmur or complaint. he died on the morning of the 17th august, in the year 1786. a great man had ceased to live. there lay the inanimate form of him who had been called king frederick the second. but a star arose in the heavens, and wise men gave it the name frederick's honor. the same star still shines in the firmament, and seems to greet us and prussia: frederick's honor! book ii. chapter i. after the king's death. "the king is dead! frederick the second is no more! i come, your majesty, to bring you this sad intelligence!" these were the words with which the minister herzberg, accompanied by the valet rietz, walked up to the bed of the prince royal, frederick william, on the night of the seventeenth of august, and aroused him from his slumber. "what is it? who speaks to me?" asked the prince royal, rising in bed, and staring at the two men who stood before him--the one with a sad, the other with a joyful expression of countenance. "i ventured to speak to your majesty," answered herzberg; "i, the former minister of king frederick the second. his majesty departed this life half an hour since, and i have come to bring the sad tidings in person. king frederick the second is dead!" "long live king frederick william the second!" cried the valet rietz, as he busily assisted the king in dressing himself and finishing his toilet. frederick william remained silent. no words, either of sorrow or of joy, escaped his lips. lost in thought, or perhaps painfully alive to the sublimity of the moment, or embarrassed as to what he should say, in order to satisfy two men so differently constituted, he silently submitted himself to his valet's attentions, while von herzberg had withdrawn to the alcove of the farthest window, and stood sadly awaiting the commands of the new king. "your majesty is attired," said rietz, in low, submissive tones. "is the carriage in readiness?" demanded frederick william, starting as if aroused from deep thought. "yes, your majesty, i ordered it to be ready at once." "come, then, herzberg, let us go; rietz, you will accompany us." "but kings should not venture into the night air, without first breaking fast. the chocolate is already prepared. will your majesty permit me to serve it up?" "no, rietz, every thing in its proper place," said the king. "my knees tremble; give me the support of your arm, herzberg, and lead me." he laid his hand heavily upon herzberg's proffered arm, and walked out, leaning upon him. rietz, who followed them, fastened his small gray eyes on the minister, and shook his fist at him behind his back. "you will not be the support of my king much longer," he muttered between his clinched teeth. "you and your whole pack shall soon be dismissed! we have stood in the background and looked on while you governed, long enough. our time has at last come, and we will make the most of it." his manner had been threatening and hostile while muttering these words; but, as he now hurried forward to open the carriage door, he quickly changed it, and he not only assisted the king in entering, but also extended a helping hand to the minister. he then jumped up and took his seat beside the coachman, and the carriage rolled down the broad avenue that led to the palace of sans-souci. the drive was of short duration, the horses pushing forward as if aware that they were carrying a new king to his future. not a word was spoken in the carriage; its occupants, the valet included, were lost in meditation. he also was fully aware that he was entering upon a new future, and he swore that it should not only be a brilliant but also a profitable one. he smiled complacently when he considered the pleasures and happiness life had in store for him. did not the king love him, and, still better, did not the king love his wife, the soi-disant madame rietz? "a plain madame she will not remain much longer," said he to himself. "she is ambitious; i will place her at the head of the department of titles and orders, but i will superintend the department of finance and material profits. when such a good-natured couple as we are harness ourselves to a wagon, it will be strange indeed if we do not manage to pull it through the mire of life, and if it does not ultimately become transformed into a right regal equipage." at this moment the carriage turned the corner of the avenue, and there lay sans-souci, illumined by the first rays of the rising sun, bright and beautiful to look upon, although the corpse of a king lay within--the corpse of one, who but yesterday was the master and ruler of millions, to-day inanimate clay, a handful of dust from the dust of humanity. the carriage halted, and, as no one came forward to open the door, rietz reluctantly opened it himself. the king's house was the scene of confusion and sorrow, and could no longer be called the house sans-souci, "the house without care," since its royal occupant had closed his eyes. the king entered the antechamber, and greeted with a kindly smile the two valets who stood near the door. tears rushed to their eyes, and disregarding etiquette in their grief, they neglected to open the door that led to the inner apartments. rietz hastened forward and opened it, and then followed the king and minister into the reception-room, which was still empty, as the princes and princesses, and the courtiers, had not yet been informed of the king's death. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" they will soon come with one weeping and one laughing eye; with a reluctant tear for the departed, and a fascinating smile for the living king, who had awakened this morning to find a crown on his brow, and a kingdom at his feet! "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" how desolate is the antechamber of the departed king to-day! not a sound is heard! the portrait of the marquise de pompadour, which she had given frederick as a mark of her favor, hangs on the wall, and smiles down upon this scene with its coquettish beauty. the king and the minister do not observe it, but rietz, who follows close behind, looks up at the picture with a complacent smile, and thinks to himself that his wife will certainly become quite as celebrated and honored as the french king's flame. why should not an empress also write to her some day--to her, the adored of the king of prussia, and call her "ma cousine?" why not? it is only with the greatest difficulty that the valet can suppress his inclination to burst into laughter, when this thought occurs to him. as he follows his master into the king's study, he covers his face with his hand, and assumes an air of deep dejection. there are people in this room, and there might be observant eyes there also. but no, there are no observant eyes in the king's study to-day. the men who are present are thinking only of their trouble and grief. there are no tears of etiquette and no sighs of assumed sorrow there. the king's four cabinet counsellors alone are present. in accordance with his request of the day before, they had come to his study at four o'clock in the morning, the accustomed hour. on the preceding day they had been admitted to his presence, and he had given them his instructions in a weak voice, and had even steadied his trembling hand sufficiently to affix his signature to a state document. to-day they had come, as usual, with the rising sun, but they now saw that their sun had set--nothing remained for them but to weep. the king did not see them, or did not seem to see them, but walked rapidly toward the open door, and the mourning group who had assembled in the adjoining apartment. on a blood-stained pillow in an arm-chair lay the countenance which was yesterday that of a king. a day had transformed it into a marble bust; it lay there with closed eyes, in peaceful serenity--a smile on the lips that had yesterday cried out to the sun, "soon i will be with you!" the great king was with the sun; that which lay in the chair was only the worthless casket of the flown soul. beside the body stood the physician sello, in deep dejection. behind the chair were the two lackeys, who had faithfully watched at the king's bedside during the preceding night; they were weeping bitterly, weeping because he had gone from them. deep silence reigned; and there was something in this silence which inspired even the valet rietz with awe. he held his breath, and approached noiselessly to look at the corpse of king frederick, whom he had never had an opportunity of viewing in such close proximity during his lifetime. as the king approached the body, the servants sobbed audibly. the physician bowed his head deeper, to salute the rising star. the greyhound, which had remained quiet and motionless at the king's feet until now, jumped up, raised its slender head, and howled piteously, and then returned to its former position. deeply moved, his eyes filled with tears, the king stooped over the dead body, raised the cold hand to his lips, and kissed it; and then he laid his warm hand on the brow that had worn a crown, and had so often been entwined with laurel-wreaths. "give me, o god, thy blessing, that i may be a worthy successor of this great king," said frederick william, in a low voice, while tears trickled down his cheeks.--"you, my predecessor, made prussia great; god grant that it may never be made weak through my instrumentality! farewell, my king and uncle, and peace be with us all!" "amen!" said herzberg, in a firm voice. "last evening, when the shades of death were already gathering on his brow, his majesty king frederick sent for me, and whispered these words, in faltering tones: 'on the morrow you will present my salutations to my successor beside my body.' your majesty, king frederick greets you through me!" frederick william inclined his head in response. "you were with the king when he died, were you not, my dear sello?" "yes, sire, i was." "at what hour did the king die?" sello raised his hand, and pointed solemnly to the large clock which stood against the wall on a marble stand. "your majesty, the hands of that clock stopped the moment the king breathed his last sigh. sire, behold the first monument erected to the memory of our great king!" frederick william looked both astonished and pleased. "this is truly wonderful," he observed, in an undertone. "they were then right! we are surrounded by wonders. the hand of a mysterious agency is visible in all things!" he walked up to the clock, and a feeling of awe crept over him as he regarded the dial. to him the hands were ghostly fingers pointing to the moment at which the king had died. "twenty minutes past two," said the king, softly. "strange, passing strange!" he turned and beckoned to his valet to approach. "rietz, at what time did i call you last night, when i was awakened by some fearful anxiety?" "it was exactly twenty minutes past two, your majesty! i am certain of it, because you commanded me to consult your watch at the time." "yes, that was the exact time," murmured the king to himself. "the spirits woke me, that i might greet the new day that was dawning for me." "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" the king, who gave enlightenment and freedom of thought to his people, is dead! king frederick is dead! a shadow darkens the sun of this first morning of the new era. this shadow will soon become a lowering cloud, and night and darkness will sink down over prussia. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" [illustration: the dead king.] frederick william had been gazing thoughtfully at the clock. with an effort he suddenly aroused himself. the hands of that clock proclaimed the cessation of the old and the beginning of the new era--of his era. he must be prepared to meet its requirements. for the second time he approached the corpse. "where are the king's decorations?" he demanded of strützki, the attendant, in whose arms the king had breathed his last. hastily drying his eyes, strützki stepped softly to the little cabinet, and opened it. "leave the others," commanded the king, "and bring me only the ribbon of the order of the black eagle." strützki speedily returned with the designated order. holding the broad orange ribbon in his hand, the king now turned to the minister von herzberg. "count," said he, "bow your head, and receive, at my hands, the last souvenir of the great king who has cast off his mortal frame, in order that he may sojourn with us as an immortal spirit. the ribbon worn by frederick the great shall now adorn your breast, in order that the respect and esteem which i entertain for you be made manifest to the world. you will be as true and zealous a friend to me as you were to my great uncle. you will serve me, as you served him, in the capacity of minister of state; and you will be often called on for advice and counsel, count herzberg." "your majesty," murmured herzberg, his voice tremulous with emotion, "your majesty rewards me beyond my deserts. i have done nothing but my duty, and--" "happy is that king," exclaimed frederick william, interrupting him, "happy is that king who is surrounded by servants who take no credit to themselves for the good and great which they accomplish, considering that they have done no more than their duty. the obligation to acknowledge their services and show his gratitude, is on this account all the more incumbent upon him; there are very few people on earth who can say of themselves, in this exalted sense, that they have done their duty. but i am a very happy king; i have two such friends at my side on the very threshold of my career. you, my dear count, i have already rewarded for your services. your patent as count shall be made out, and the insignia of the highest order of the black eagle presented you. you will still continue to administer the affairs of your foreign bureau. and now, you need rest, my dear count; i know that you have watched a great deal in the last few nights. _au revoir!_" after taking a last lingering look at the royal corpse, herzberg retired; and king frederick william turned to the valet, rietz, who had stood, with his head bowed down, in order to hide the curiosity, and the indifference to the solemnity of the occasion, which were depicted in his countenance. "and now, my dear rietz," said the king, extending his hand to the valet, "now the time has at last come when i can reward you for your faithful services! i appoint you treasurer of my household, and keeper of my strong-box!"[22] "ah, your majesty, my beloved king," sobbed rietz, as he pressed frederick william's hand to his thick, swollen lips, "such grace, such favor, i have not deserved. i thank your majesty, however, from the bottom of my heart, and you shall always find in me a true and faithful servant! oh, what will my wife say, and how happy she will be, over the new honor you have conferred upon me!" the king withdrew his hand with a slight shudder, and looked almost timidly in the direction of the corpse, which lay there so grand and still. he did not see the quiet, stealthy glance which the treasurer fastened on his countenance. if the corpse of the great frederick had suddenly come to life again--if those closed eyes had opened once more--how withering a glance would they have bestowed upon the wanton valet! but even the corpse of a king hears no more, and the closed eyes open not again! "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" the king stepped slowly back, but his gaze still rested on the countenance of the dead. though closed, those eyes seemed to see into his heart. "rietz, send for the sculptor, in potsdam, in order that a cast of the king's face may be taken." "your majesty, it shall be attended to immediately." he hurried toward the door, but a gesture of his royal master recalled him. frederick william dreaded being left alone with the great dead and the weeping lackeys! for he well knew that the bodies of the departed were always watched over by the spirits of their ancestors. he knew that the spirits of those who had been dear to the departed in love and friendship, and the spirits of those who were his enemies while they trod the earth in the flesh, were now hovering over the body, and struggling for the possession of king frederick's soul, even as they struggled for the soul of moses. but a short time had elapsed since this had been communicated to him by the spirit of the great philosopher leibnitz, whom the two believers, bischofswerder and wöllner, had conjured up to confirm the statements they had made to the unbelieving prince royal! yes, these hostile spirits are struggling over the body for the possession of the soul, and to remain, with this knowledge, alone with the dead and the contending spirits, inspires awe and terror. "rietz, my faithful follower, remain," said the king, almost anxiously. "but no! call lieutenant-colonel bischofswerder." "your majesty, he has ridden into the city to carry this sad intelligence to the present prince royal, and conduct him here to sans-souci." "and the councillor wöllner?" "your majesty, i have dispatched a courier to berlin to inform him of the king's death, and he will probably soon be here." "ah, rietz, you are a faithful and considerate servant. go before and open the doors. i will repair to the audience-chamber; the court will probably have assembled by this time!" he waved the royal corpse a final adieu, bowed and walked backward to the door, as if retiring from an audience accorded him by the great frederick. profound silence reigned in the chamber for a moment, until alkmene crept out from under the chair and again howled piteously. chapter ii. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" while only two poor servants and a faithful dog remained with the dead king, the new king was receiving the congratulations of his court in the audience-chamber. the court officials and ministers had already assembled; and now the princes of the royal family were coming in. rietz, who had remained in the antechamber, now entered and approached the king. "your majesty, his royal highness the prince royal and prince louis have this moment arrived, and beg permission to tender their congratulations." "conduct the prince to the concert-hall," said the king, "i will join him there directly.--and lieutenant-colonel bischofswerder?" "your majesty, he accompanied the prince royal." the king bowed graciously. the word "majesty" sounded like sweet music in his ear, and drowned the wail of grief for the departed. bestowing a kindly smile upon the assembled court, the king left the audience-chamber in order to repair to the concert-hall, where the two princes awaited him. rietz went in advance, and, as he threw open the door of the concert-hall, cried in a loud voice, "his majesty the king!" the two princes hastened forward, and pressed their father's extended hand to their lips. "i take the liberty of tendering to my royal father my most humble congratulations." the prince uttered these words in a stiff and declamatory manner, merely repeating them as they had been taught him by his tutor, professor behnisch. "i beg that your majesty will accord me your favor, and i assure my royal father that he will always find in me an affectionate son and his most obedient subject." the king's countenance darkened as he gazed upon the prince, who would one day be his successor. prince royal! an unpleasant word, truly; a gloomy and constant reminder of approaching death!--the prince royal, who is only waiting to be king, who, like the shadow of death, is ever at the monarch's side, reminding him of approaching dissolution. to love one's successor is certainly a hard task; but his existence may, at least, be forgiven, when he is the son of a loved wife, when the father loves his child. but when the prince royal is the fruit of a marriage of convenience, the son of an unloved wife--when the king has another and a cherished son, whose mother he has passionately loved!--ah, how differently would this son have received his father! he would have thrown himself into his father's arms, and would have hugged and kissed him. "oh, my dear son alexander, why are you not my successor? why must you remain at a distance? why are you not permitted to stand at my side in this great hour? but all this shall be changed! my alexander shall no longer remain in obscurity--no, he shall not!" with his two sons the king had only exchanged a few words of ceremony. he responded but coldly to the formal congratulation of the prince royal; and replied with a mute gesture only to the embarrassed and stammering words of prince louis. "and now go, my princes," said he; "go and look at the body of your great uncle, and impress the solemn scene upon your minds, that you may never forget it!" "i shall never forget the great king," said the prince royal, his countenance expressive of great tenderness and emotion. "no, your majesty, i shall never forget the great frederick. he was always so gentle and gracious to me; and but a few days ago he spoke to me like a kind father, and that made me feel so proud and happy that i can never forget it, and never cease to be grateful while life lasts." the long-repressed tears now rushed from the prince royal's eyes, and prince louis began to weep, too, when he saw his brother's tears, and murmured: "the great frederick was also very gracious to me." the king turned aside. his sons' tears were offensive. who knows whether they will weep when their father also dies? "go, my sons, and pay a last tribute of tears to the past, and then turn your thoughts to the joyful realities of the present!" the two princes bowed ceremoniously, and then left the room, retiring backward, as if in military drill. the king's eyes followed them as they left the room, and his countenance darkened. "they are as stiff and awkward as puppets. and yet they have hearts, but not for their father!--rietz!" the chamberlain immediately appeared in the doorway, and stood awaiting his master's commands, his countenance beaming with humility. "rietz, go at once and inform my son alexander of what has taken place! he must go to charlottenburg with his tutor and await me there! let him tell his mother that i will take tea with her this evening, and that she may expect me at six o'clock." "will your majesty pass the night in charlottenburg?" asked the chamberlain, with his eyes cast down and the most innocent expression of countenance. "i cannot say," replied the king; "i may go to berlin, and--" "your majesty, perhaps, considers it necessary to pay a visit of condolence to the widowed queen at schönhausen?" rietz had said this in an almost inaudible voice, but the king's attentive ear caught the words nevertheless, and his countenance beamed with joy. "yes, my friend and heart's interpreter, i will visit the widowed queen at schönhausen. take the fastest horse from my stable and ride there to announce my coming." "to the widowed queen only, your majesty? to no one else?" "you ask as if you did not know what my reply would be," said the king, smiling. "no, you may also present my compliments to the queen's beautiful maid of honor, julie von voss. request her, in my name, to hold herself in readiness to receive me. i wish to speak with her on matters of great importance. go, my friend!" "to speak with her on matters of great importance," muttered rietz, after he had left the room. "as if we did not all very well know what he has to say to this beautiful young lady; as if his love for her were not a public secret, well known to the queen, his wife, to the entire court, and to dear madame rietz, my wife! very well, i will first ride to young alexander, then i will speed to schönhausen, and finally i will hie me to madame rietz in charlottenburg, to make my report. my dear wife is so generous, and i can dispose of so much money! life is so pleasant when one has money. and it is all the same who a man is and what he is! if he always has money, a goodly supply in his purse, he is a distinguished man, and is respected by all. therefore the main thing is to become rich, for the world belongs to the rich; and i am quite willing that the world should belong to me. oh, i will make the best use of my time; and those who suppose they can fool me by their flattery, and that i can be induced to intercede for them with the king, out of pure goodness of heart, will discover that they have calculated without their host. money is the word, gentlemen! pay up, and the influence of the mighty chamberlain shall be exerted in your behalf; but nothing gratis! death only is gratis! no, i am wrong," said he, laughing derisively, as he gazed at a company of grenadiers, who were marching up the avenue toward the palace, where they were to be stationed as a guard of honor to the royal corpse. "the funeral costs a great deal of money." the grenadiers passed on; and the subdued roll of the drums, which were draped in mourning, died away in the distance, while the winds wafted over from potsdam the sounds of the tolling bells which proclaimed the king's death to the awakening city. rietz hurried off to send the son of the king to his mother in charlottenburg, and then to ride to schönhausen and deliver a loving greeting to frederick william's new flame. it was still silent and desolate in the chamber of the dead at sans-souci. strützki had once stepped softly out of the room to get some twigs from the elder-tree which stood on the terrace, to keep the flies from the face of the dead king. and now the two lackeys were standing on either side of the chair, fanning away the miserable insects that had dared to light on this countenance since the hand of the artist death had chiselled it into marble. nothing was heard but the rustle of the twigs and the humming of the flies, ever returning, as if to mock man's vain efforts to drive them from what was justly their own. the doors were softly opened, and the two princes glided in, and noiselessly approached the arm-chair in which frederick lay, as if fearful of awakening him. the prince royal looked at the body long and silently, and his countenance was expressive of deep and earnest feeling. "stand aside, lackeys," said he, haughtily, "and you, too, my brother, i wish to be alone. i wish to commune awhile with his majesty!" the lackeys and prince louis retired; the former to the door, the latter to the distant window; and now the lad of sixteen was alone with the immortal frederick. he knelt down before the body, grasped the cold hand, and gazed on the marble features of the great dead with an expression of intense earnestness and determination. "my great uncle and king," murmured he, "i swear to you that i will endeavor to do all that you recently enjoined upon me; and that i will ever strive to do honor to your great name. i swear to you that i will one day be a good and useful king, and endeavor to deserve the affection of the people. my dear uncle, i have a secret in my heart, and i must disclose it before you descend into the grave. it seems to me your sleep will be more peaceful when you learn it: i hate madame rietz and her husband. and if she is still living when i become king, i will punish her for her crimes, and will repay her for all the tears which she has caused my dear mother. no one knows of my determination except my mother, who recently told me what sorrow madame rietz had occasioned her, and then i was so angry that i wished to go immediately and kill her. but my mother exhorted me to silence and patience, and i promised that i would obey her. but when i am king, i will be no longer silent; then shall come the day of arraignment and punishment. this i swear to you, my dear, my great uncle and king; and this is the secret i longed to disclose. yes, i will some day avenge my mother. farewell, my king--sleep in peace! and--" a hand was laid upon his shoulder; he looked up and saw his young cousin prince louis, whose approach he had not noticed, standing beside him. "i congratulate you, cousin," said prince louis, impressively, "and crave the continuance of your favor, prince royal of prussia. his majesty the king sent me here to pay my respects to the royal corpse and the prince royal, but i propose to pay my respects to the latter first." "no," said frederick william, who had slowly arisen from his knees, "that you must not do, cousin louis. i am not changed, and am no better because of our great king's death." "but more powerful," said the prince; "you are now prince royal, and the greatest deference should be shown you. oh, do not look at me so earnestly and angrily, cousin. you think i am cold and indifferent; but no, i have only determined not to weep over the body of our dear uncle. my mother tells me we shall also soon die, if we let fall a tear on the countenance of the dead. and yet, frederick, when i reflect that the good uncle is dead who was always so kind to me, and who was our pride and glory, i cannot help shedding tears in spite of my mother's injunction. oh, great frederick, that you could have remained a few years longer on earth, till that proud eye might have rested on a gallant prince and brave soldier, instead of a foolish lad!" "but, cousin, how can you speak so disparagingly of yourself, and so far forget your dignity as a prince?" "ah, a prince is no better than any one else," said prince louis, shrugging his shoulders, "and while i have the greatest respect for your exalted rank, mr. prince royal, i have none whatever for my own little title; particularly at this moment, when i see that the great frederick, the hero and king, was only a mortal. oh, my dear uncle, why did you leave us so soon! you were not yet so old--scarcely seventy-four years, and there are so many who are older. a short time since, as i was coming here to inquire after your health, i saw an old man at the entrance of the park, warming himself in the sun; he sat with folded hands, and prayed aloud. i approached and offered him a piece of money, which he rejected. i then asked him why he prayed and begged, if he did not desire money. 'i am praying for the sick king,' said he; 'i am entreating the sunbeams to warm and invigorate the king's suffering body, and restore him to new life. the king is so young! he should live much longer. i was a soldier when the king was baptized, and stood near by as a sentinel; and now they say that he must die. that makes me anxious. if so young a man must already die, my turn will soon come; and i so much desire to live a little longer and warm myself in the bright sunshine!' and the old man of ninety is still sitting in the sunshine; while you, great frederick, were compelled to die! you have gone to the sun, while we are still groping in darkness, and lamenting your loss, and--" "be still, cousin!" murmured the prince royal; "some one is coming! it is the sculptor who is to take a cast of the king's face. come, let us go! come!" he extended his hand to prince louis, to lead him out of the room, but the prince drew back. he knelt down before the body, and kissed the cold hand which had recently stroked his cheeks affectionately. frederick had always loved prince louis, the son of his brother ferdinand, and had often prophesied that he would live to accomplish something great and useful. the young prince thought of this, as he pressed the cold hand to his lips in a last farewell. "i swear to you, my great uncle and king, that i will faithfully strive to fulfil your prophecy, and accomplish something good and useful, and to do honor to the name i bear. let the kiss which i now press on your hand be the seal of my vow, and my last greeting!" he arose, and his large dark eyes rested on the body with a lingering, tender look. "oh," sighed he, "why am i not a painter or an artist, that i might sketch this scene!" "a happy suggestion," said the prince royal, eagerly. "i am certainly no artist, but i can draw a little nevertheless; and i intend to make for myself a memento of this day.--mr. eckstein, i beg you to wait a quarter of an hour, in order that i may make a sketch of this scene." the sculptor, who had already approached the body with his apparatus, bowed respectfully, and stepped back. prince louis took a pencil and a sheet of paper from the king's writing-desk, and handed it to his brother the prince royal. the latter commenced to sketch the scene with hurried strokes.[23] his brother stood at his side, looking on; behind the chair were the two lackeys, and the greyhound's head protruded from beneath the chair. the sculptor eckstein had withdrawn to the farthest end of the room. prince louis had, however, noiselessly glided into the adjoining concert-room, where the instruments were kept. there were the flutes and violins in their cases, and there stood the magnificent piano, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, which the king's hands had so often touched. the silence of the death-chamber was once more unbroken. the body lay there, so great and sublime in the two-fold majesty of death and renown, and the prince royal was absorbed in his work, when the silence was suddenly broken by subdued tones of plaintive music. these tones came from the concert-room, and filled the chamber of the dead with low and harmonious sighs and lamentations. alkmene crept out from under the arm-chair, and trotted slowly into the adjoining chamber, as if to see if her master, whose voice she had not heard since yesterday, had not called to her to come to him at the piano. the greyhound, however, returned to her former position, when she saw that it was another who sat at the piano. no, it was not the king, but his nephew louis, who was playing this requiem for the great departed, and tears were trickling down over his handsome and manly young face. perhaps it was improper to break in upon the stillness of the sacred chamber in this manner. but what cared the young prince for that. he thought only of bringing the great dead a last love-offering, and none was there to prevent him. etiquette had nothing more to do with the dead king. it had taken up its abode in the neighboring audience-chamber, with the living king. there, all was formality and ceremony. there, decorated excellencies and gold-embroidered uniforms were making profound obeisances. there, respectful congratulations were being made, and gracious smiles accorded by royal lips. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" chapter iii. the favorites. king frederick william stepped back into the little audience-chamber, and beckoned to his two friends bischofswerder and wöllner to follow him. he embraced bischofswerder, and pressed a kiss on his forehead. "my friend, you must never leave me, but always remain at my side." "i will follow my royal master," said bischofswerder, bowing profoundly, "as a faithful dog follows his master's footsteps, satisfied if he shall from time to time vouchsafe me a gracious look." "i know you, my friend," said the king. "i know that you are disinterested, that you are not ambitious, and that the things of this world are of but little importance to your noble mind." "let it be my task to provide for your earthly as you have undertaken to provide for my spiritual welfare. my dear bischofswerder, i appoint you colonel, and this shall be only the step from which you will be rapidly promoted to the rank of general; for you not only war bravely and daringly against visible men, but also against invisible spirits, and it is my holy duty and privilege to reward the brave." "your majesty," said bischofswerder, gently, "the only reward i crave is your favor. i desire and solicit nothing more. the honors and dignities which you shower upon me, and of which i am so undeserving, only awaken anxiety by illumining my small merit, and making my unworthiness all the more conspicuous before the world. nevertheless, i accept with thanks the promotion accorded me by the grace of my king, although i would rather decline the honor, and remain in obscurity in the shadow of your throne. but i dare not, for a higher one has commanded me to submit to your behests, and i must obey." "a higher one?" asked the king. "who is he? who commands here besides myself?" "your majesty, the spirits of the great dead--the invisible, whose power is greater than that of all the visible, however great and mighty they may be!" the king had asked this question with a proud and haughty glance; suddenly his manner altered, his countenance assumed an humble, penitent look, his head sank down upon his breast, and he folded his hands as if in prayer. "i am a sinner and a criminal," he murmured. "in the pride of my new dignity i forgot my superiors; and the little visible creature dared to consider himself the equal of the invisible! i now repent, beg for mercy, and am ready to yield obedience to my superiors.--they have then spoken to you again, these superior beings? they have imparted to you their wishes?" "your majesty," said bischofswerder, in a mysterious whisper, "while sleeping last night, i was suddenly awakened by a wondrous radiance, and i sprang from my bed, believing that fire had broken out and enveloped my room in flames; but i felt that a gentle hand forced me back, and i now saw that the light which had terrified me came from a luminous countenance, which stood out in bold relief amid the surrounding darkness. the eyes of this countenance shone like two heavenly stars, shedding a soft light upon me. with a celestial smile on its lips, the spirit spoke to me: 'your heart is humble and guileless. you have no craving after earthly honors, and are not attracted by grandeur and riches; but i command you to arise from your humility, and no longer to withdraw yourself from earthly honors, for those whom the invisible love must also be recognized and elevated by the visible, that their favor be made manifest before men. you will be advanced to-morrow, and on the ensuing day you will receive a second advancement; and what your king offers you must accept. this is the will of the invisible.' and after this wonderful spirit had spoken it vanished, and all was again enveloped in darkness. i, however, lit a candle, in order that i might have tangible proof, on arising the next morning, that this had been no dream; i wrote down on a sheet of paper the last words the spirit had spoken, and the hour at which it appeared. your majesty, i have brought this paper with me to show it to my king. here it is!" the king took the writing, and read in a low voice: "you will be advanced to-morrow, and on the ensuing day you will receive a second advancement; and what the king offers you must accept. this is the will of the invisible. command of the radiant spirit, given in the night between the sixteenth and seventeenth of august, at twenty minutes past two." "the hour at which the king died," exclaimed frederick william, with astonishment, "and the hour at which i also suddenly awoke! wonderful, wonderful indeed!" "your majesty, for those endowed with intuition there are no wonders," said bischofswerder, quietly, "and your majesty belongs to this number." "but only in a very slight degree," sighed the king. "i am still groping in the twilight; my eyes are yet dazzled by the splendor of the invisible." "but your majesty will advance steadily toward the source of light; and if the invisible will permit me to conduct you into the holy temple of infinite knowledge, i will esteem it the greatest earthly blessing!" "yes," cried the king, in ecstasy; "yes, my friend, you shall conduct me; and, at the side of him upon whom this light has been shed, i will walk in safety over the slippery paths of life. nothing can astonish me in the future, for the paper i hold in my hand is a miracle, and an evidence that the invisible is omnipresent and omniscient. at the same moment in which king frederick died i awoke with a cry, and at the same time the spirit announced to you that you would be advanced by your king--by me, who at that moment became king! my friend, i beg you to give me this paper, this evidence of the presence of the invisible." bischofswerder bowed profoundly. "all that the king's consecrating hand touches becomes his property, as i am his with all that is mine!" "i thank you, colonel, i thank you. ascend the step to honor which this day offers, and let it be my care that the prophecy for the ensuing day be also fulfilled. and now," continued the king, turning to wöllner, who had stood with folded hands, his head bowed down, during this conversation; "and now, as to you, councillor wöllner, you are also deserving of thanks and reward." "far more deserving than i, poor unworthy man," exclaimed bischofswerder; "for chrysophorus, the effulgent, belongs to the chosen, and is the favorite of the invisible. if your majesty empties the plenteous horn of your favor on the head of chrysophorus, no drop will be lost, but all will fall on good and fertile soil." the king greeted the noble, disinterested friend with a kindly smile, and then laid his hand gently on wöllner's shoulder. "thus i will sustain myself on you, wöllner, and as i now lay my right hand on you, so will i make you my right hand, as i make bischofswerder my head, to think for me. you too shall be my head and my hand." "but your heart, sire?" asked wöllner, in his earnest and solemn voice. "your heart you must be yourself, and no other human being must be your heart but the king himself." frederick william smiled. "my heart, that am i--i the king, but also i the man; and the head and hand which act for me, must also permit the heart to act, as it will and can! councillor wöllner, has the invisible announced nothing to you? have you alone passed the night in quiet slumber?" "your majesty," replied wöllner, with an air of self-reproach, "i have received no message from the invisible; i must honor the truth, and acknowledge that i have rarely enjoyed such peaceful and unbroken slumber as in the past night." "he slept the sleep of the just," said bischofswerder, "and the spirits kept watch at the door of our chrysophorus." "well, then, i will announce to you what the spirits did not announce," exclaimed the king, with vivacity, "wöllner, i appoint you privy councillor of the finances, and, at the same time, intendant of the royal bureau of construction." "oh, your majesty," cried wöllner, his little gray eyes sparkling with joy, "that is more than i deserve, almost more than i can accept. i do not consider myself worthy of such high distinction; and this favor far exceeds my merit. and yet, notwithstanding the high honor my king has conferred upon me, i still dare prefer a request; one, however, which does not spring from any bold desire of my own, but one which the command of the invisible compels me to utter. i am not actuated by earthly motives, but i must obey the behests of the spirits." "what is this request, my dear privy councillor of the finances?" asked the king, with a smile. "i give you my royal word that your first request shall be granted." "your majesty, my request is only this: give me your favor, your confidence, and your esteem, as long as i live." "this i promise you, but as a matter of course i should have been compelled to do so, although you had not asked me. this, therefore, we cannot consider a compliance with your request. speak, wöllner, and prefer your other request." "well, then, your majesty, i beg to be permitted to arrange king frederick's papers, and prepare this literary legacy for the press." "i commission you not only to do so," said the king, "but, in order to remove all impediments and facilitate your labors, i make you a present of these papers, to have and to hold as your own property. you may print or suppress portions of them, as seems best to you. i make this one condition, however, that you do not destroy the king's writings, manuscripts, and papers, after you have examined and had then printed as your insight and judgment shall direct; but that you deposit them in the royal archives, set apart for the preservation of such documents." "your commands shall be obeyed in every particular," said wöllner, respectfully, "and that no doubts may arise on this subject, i beg this favor of your majesty, that you make out a written order to the effect that all the papers of the deceased king (whom i unhappily cannot call the blessed, because he lived in unbelief and darkness) be transferred to me by the two privy cabinet councillors of the late king; they taking a receipt for the exact number of sheets counted out to me, and my written obligation to return each and every one of them. and i will certainly make haste to accomplish my task, for the invisible has commanded me to complete the great work with which i have been intrusted without delay." "and are you permitted to acquaint me with the object of this great work, my friend?" asked the king. "yes your majesty, i am not only permitted, but am commanded to do so! i am to impart to you the reasons why i solicit the papers of the deceased king, and why i desire to have them printed. the object is, that the eyes of your majesty's subjects may be opened, and they be brought to the knowledge that he, whom freethinkers and unbelievers called a shining light, was a mocker at all religion, and an atheist who scoffed at all that was holy, and did homage to himself, the idol of renown and heathenish poetry, only. the invisible has commanded me to unveil the scoffing mind of the unbelieving king, and make manifest to the world that such a one may never hope to enter heaven and participate in bliss. listen, my dear king and master," continued wöllner, in an elevated voice, as the roll of drums announced the approach of a body of troops; "listen to those drums proclaiming the dawn of a new day! hail the day which gives to millions of misguided men a leader and a guide, destined to lead them back to the right path; and to rear aloft the holy cross which his predecessor trod under foot! hail to your people, frederick william, for you have come to rebuild the church of god! hail to thee, thou favorite of the invisible! hail, frederick william!" and with a cry of enthusiasm, bischofswerder repeated the words, "hail to thee, thou favorite of the invisible! hail, frederick william!" the king had listened to wöllner with downcast eyes, and the joyful acclamations of his two friends seemed only to have given him disquiet and anxiety. "i am an unworthy sinner," murmured the king, in a penitent voice, "and if you do not take pity on me and intercede for me with the invisible, i am a lost man. i implore you both to sustain me with a helping hand, that i may not fall to the ground." "the invisible has commanded us to stay at your side and devote our lives to your welfare," said wöllner, solemnly. "and even if he had not," cried bischofswerder, feelingly, "my own heart would have prompted me to do so, for i am my king's alone, and am ready to shed my blood for him. tell us, therefore, what we are to do, and what is required to restore peace to your soul." "say, to my heart, my faithful friend," cried the king, "for it is my heart that needs peace. i love, love with glowing passion. and yet i have sworn in the holy lodge of the invisible to dedicate my life to virtue. oh, tell me, tell me, my friends, how can i keep my vow without giving my heart the death-blow! do not let me sink in despair, but take pity on me. i feel sick and miserable; the torment of love and the conflict with duty rob me of all strength and courage. oh, help me, help me! you, my friend bischofswerder, let me drink once more of the elixir of life, which the great magician, cagliostro, intrusted you with; give me once more life, health, and happiness!" "your majesty knows," replied bischofswerder, "that i gave you the last drop of the precious elixir, given me by the great magician, to infuse new life and health into my veins, when the hour of death should draw near. i joyfully delivered myself over to death in order that my king might have new life; and i now learn, with the greatest sorrow, that it was not sufficient to accomplish its object. but what i would never do for myself, i will now do for my king. i will entreat the invisible to impart to me the secret of the preparation of this elixir of life; i will address my thoughts to this magician with all the strength of my soul, and conjure him to appear and instruct me how to concoct the elixir of life for my king and master." "ah," sighed the king, sadly, "if it is necessary that the magician should appear here, personally, in order to impart to you this wonderful secret, my wish will probably never be gratified, for cagliostro is at present, as my ambassador yesterday informed me, in london; and the believers are pouring into that city, from all parts of europe, to see the sublime martyr, who languished in a french prison, on account of the unhappy necklace affair, until his innocence was proved, when he was restored to liberty, on condition that he should leave france at once and never recross its boundaries. cagliostro then went to london, where he is now receiving the homage of his admirers; and there he expects to remain, as he informed our ambassador. how can your prayers and entreaties have sufficient power to call the magician here from so great a distance? his sublime spirit is united with the body, and is subject to finite laws." "no, my king," replied bischofswerder, quietly, "the sublime magician, cagliostro is uncontrolled by these laws. the miraculous power of his spirit governs the body, and it must obey his behests. i read in your soul that you are in doubt, my king, and that you do not believe in the dominion of the spirit. but your majesty must learn to do so, for in this belief only are safety and eternal health to be found for you and for us all. i will invoke the invisible in the coming night; and, if my prayer be heard, the magician of the north will appear in our midst this very night, to give ear to my entreaties." "if this should occur," cried the king, "i am forever converted to this belief, and nothing can hereafter make me waver in my trust and confidence in you, my bischofswerder!" "it will occur," said bischofswerder, quietly. "i beg that your majesty will call chrysophorus and myself to your chamber at the next midnight hour, in order that we may invoke the invisible in your presence." "at the next midnight hour?" repeated the king, in confusion. bischofswerder's quick, piercing glance seemed to read the king's inmost thoughts in his embarrassed manner. "i know," said he, after a pause, "that your majesty intended to pass this night in charlottenburg with your children and their mother; and if your majesty commands, we will meet there at the midnight hour." "do so, my friends," said the king, hastily, "i will await you in charlottenburg, at the appointed time, although i scarcely believe you will come; and doubt, very much, whether bischofswerder's incantations will have power to call the great magician to my assistance. oh, i am greatly in need of help. if you are really my friends, and if the invisible has anointed your eyes with the rays of knowledge, you also must know what torments my soul is undergoing!" "and we do know," said bischofswerder. "it has been announced to us." "and we do know," repeated wöllner, "the invisible has commanded me to implore his dearest son, king frederick william, not to burden his conscience with new sin, but to renounce the passion which is burning in his heart." "i cannot, no, i cannot!" exclaimed frederick william; and with a cry of anguish he buried his face in his hands. his two confidants exchanged a rapid glance; and bischofswerder, as if answering an unspoken but well-understood question of wöllner's, shook his head dissentingly. he then stooped down to the lamenting, moaning king. "your majesty," whispered he, "to-night we will also ask the invisible if he will not have indulgence with the king's love; and permit the beautiful fräulein von voss to become the wife of the man she loves?" "oh, if this could be brought about!" cried the king, throwing his arms around his friend's neck, "i could be the happiest of mortals, and would gladly resign to you my whole kingdom to dispose of it as you see fit. give me the woman i love, and i will give you my royal authority!" again the two confidants exchanged rapid glances, and wöllner bowed his head in assent. "we will entreat the invisible to-night," said bischofswerder--"and i hope that he will grant what your majesty desires." "but, if so, certain conditions will be exacted, and penance enjoined," said wöllner. "i am ready to consent to all his demands, and to do all he enjoins, if he will only give me this heavenly woman." chapter iv. the maid of honor. no intelligence of the demise of the great king had as yet arrived at the palace of schönhausen, the residence of queen elizabeth christine, frederick's wife. it was still early in the morning, and the queen, who was in the habit of sending a special courier to potsdam every day, to inquire after the king's health, was now writing the customary morning letter to her husband. she had just finished the letter, and was folding the sheet, when the door of the adjoining chamber was opened, and a tall and remarkably beautiful young lady appeared on the threshold. her rich, light, and unpowdered hair fell in a profusion of little locks around her high-arched brow. her large, almond-shaped eyes were of a clear, luminous blue, her delicately-curved nose gave her countenance an aristocratic expression; and from her slightly-pouting crimson lips, when she smiled, all the little cupids of love and youth seemed to send their arrows into the hearts of the admirers of the lovely maid of honor, julie von voss. her tall and slender figure showed the delicate outline and the rich fulness which we admire in the statues of venus, and there was, at the same time, something of the dignified, severe, and chaste juno in her whole appearance--something unapproachable, that demanded deference, and kept her worshippers at a distance, after they had been attracted by her alluring beauty. the queen greeted her maid of honor, who bowed profoundly, with a gentle smile. "you have come for my letter, have you not, my child? the courier is waiting?" "no, your majesty," replied the maid of honor, in a somewhat solemn voice. "no, it is not a question of dispatching a courier, but of receiving one who begs to be permitted to see you. the valet of your royal nephew frederick william is in the antechamber, and desires to be admitted to your presence." the queen arose from her sofa with a vivacity unusual in one of her age. "the valet of my nephew?" said elizabeth christine, with quivering lips--"and do you know what brings him here?" "he will impart his mission to your majesty only," replied the maid of honor; and when the queen sank back on the sofa, and told her in faltering tones to admit the courier, she threw the door open, and summoned the valet with a proud wave of the hand. and straightway the broad, colossal figure of the royal privy chamberlain rietz appeared on the threshold. with a smile on his thick lips, and his little gray eyes fixed intently on the pale old lady, who stared at him with an expression of breathless anxiety, the chamberlain entered, and walked across the wide room to the queen's sofa with the greatest composure, although she had expressed no desire that he should do so. "your majesty," said he, without waiting permission to speak, "i have been sent by his majesty king frederick william--" the queen interrupted him with a cry of anguish. "by king frederick william!" she repeated, in faltering tones. "he is then dead?" "yes," replied rietz, inclining his head slightly. "yes, king frederick died last night; and he who was heretofore prince of prussia is now king of prussia. his majesty sends the widowed queen his most gracious and devoted greeting; and orders me to inform her majesty that he will arrive here during the day to pay her a visit of condolence." the queen paid no attention to the chamberlain's words; of all that he had spoken, she heard but this, that her husband, that frederick the great, was dead, that the man she had loved with such fidelity and resignation for the last fifty years was no longer among the living. "he is dead! oh, my god, he is dead!" she cried, in piercing accents. "how can life continue, how can the world exist, now that frederick is no more! what is to become of unhappy prussia, when the great king no longer reigns; what can it be without his wisdom and strength, and his enlightened mind?" "your majesty forgets that the king has a glorious successor," remarked rietz, with cynical indifference. a dark frown gathered on the brow of the maid of honor, julie von voss, when the chamberlain uttered these impertinent words; and she glanced haughtily at his broad, self-complacent countenance. "leave the room," said she, waving her hand imperiously toward the door; "wait in the antechamber till you are called to receive her majesty's reply and commands." the chamberlain's countenance flushed with anger, but he quickly suppressed all outward manifestation of feeling, and assumed an humble and respectful manner. "your grace commands," said he, "and i am her zealous and obedient servant, ever ready to do her bidding. and herein i know that i am only fulfilling the desire of my royal master, who--" "leave the room at once!" cried the maid of honor, her cheeks flushing with anger. "no," said the queen, awakening from her sad reverie; "no, let good rietz remain, dear julie. he must tell me of the great dead. i must know how he died, and how his last hours passed.--speak, rietz, tell me." the chamberlain described the king's last hours in so ready and adroit a manner, managing to introduce the person of the new king so cleverly into his narrative, and accompanying his remarks with such intelligent and significant looks at the maid of honor, that she blushingly avoided his glances, and pressed her lips firmly together, as if to suppress the angry and resentful words her rosy lips longed to utter. "i left his majesty king frederick william in the death-chamber," said rietz, as he finished his narrative. "but, even in the depth of his grief for his royal uncle, he thought of the living whom he loves so dearly, and commanded me to hasten to schönhausen, to announce that he intended to gratify the longings of his heart by coming here, and that--" "will not your majesty dismiss the messenger?" interrupted the maid of honor in an angry voice. "yes, he may go," murmured elizabeth christine. "tell the king my nephew that i await him, and feel highly honored by the consideration shown me." "your majesty, love and admiration draw him to schönhausen," observed rietz. "i can assure you of this, for the king confides every thing to me, and often calls me his--" "figaro," added the maid of honor, with a contemptuous curl of her proud lips. "his friend," continued rietz, without, as it seemed, having heard this cutting word. "i have the honor to know all my master's heart-secrets, and--" "to be the husband of wilhelmine enke," exclaimed the maid of honor, passionately. "your majesty, will you not dismiss the messenger?" "you may go, rietz," said the queen, gently. but rietz still hesitated, and fastened his gaze upon the young lady, with a smiling expression. "your majesty," said she, "i believe he is waiting for a gratuity; and we will not be rid of him until he receives it." rietz broke out into loud laughter, regardless of the presence of the mourning and weeping queen. "this is comical," he cried. "this i will relate to his majesty; it will amuse him to learn that this young lady offers his privy chamberlain and treasurer a gratuity. he will consider it quite bewitching on her part, for his majesty finds every thing she does bewitching. but i am not waiting for a gratuity, but for permission to deliver to mademoiselle von voss the messages which his majesty intrusted to me for her grace, and i therefore beg the young lady--" "go out of the room, and wait in the antechamber until i send for you!" said the maid of honor, imperiously. "and will you soon do so?" asked rietz, with unruffled composure. "i take the liberty to remark, that i have other commissions to execute for his majesty, and therefore i ask whether you will soon call me?" "you have nothing to ask, but only to obey," said the young lady, proudly. rietz shrugged his shoulders; bowed profoundly to the queen, who was wholly occupied with her grief, and had heard nothing of this conversation, and then left the room with a firm step. "she is very proud, very haughty," growled rietz in a low voice, as he threw himself into a chair in the antechamber with such violence, that it cracked beneath him. "that she is, and it will require much trouble to tame her. but she shall be tamed nevertheless; and the day will come when i can repay her abuse with interest. figaro she called me. i know very well what that means; my french education has not been thrown away. yes, yes, figaro! i understand! the ever-complaisant servant of count almaviva, and the negotiator in the affair with the beautiful rosine. oh, my young lady, take care! i am the figaro, to-day, helping to capture the fair rosine, in order to deliver her over to count almaviva. but i, too, have my beautiful susanna; and some day, when almaviva wearies of his divine rosine, he will turn again to my susanna; and you will then be thrown in the background. figaro! ah, my lovely maid of honor, i will give you cause to remember having called me this name! i will speak to my wife about this matter before the day is over!" chapter v. figaro. while rietz was sitting in the antechamber, in an angry and resentful frame of mind, the maid of honor was still at the queen's side, endeavoring to console her with tender words and entreaties. "after all, your majesty is but suffering an imaginary loss," said the maid of honor finally, after she had exhausted all other grounds of consolation. "for you, all will be just as it was before, as it has been for many years; and it should be all the same to your majesty whether the king has died, or is still remaining in sans-souci, for you were widely separated in either case." "but i was always with him in thought," lamented elizabeth christine. "i knew that he lived, that we breathed the same air, that the ray of sunshine which warmed me, fell also on his dear, noble head. i knew that the eyes of the country were directed toward sans-souci; and that the great king's every word found an echo throughout all europe. it did me good, and was my consolation for all other wants, that this great hero and king, who was worshipped and admired by the world, sometimes thought of his poor wife, in his infinite goodness, and sometimes shed a ray of light on her dark and solitary life. i was permitted to be at his side on every new-year's-day, and hold with him the grand court-reception. and i always looked forward to this event with rejoicing throughout the entire year, for he was ever the first to congratulate me, although in silence; and then he looked at me so kindly and mildly with his wondrous eyes, that my heart overflowed with happiness and bliss." "but he never spoke to your majesty, the cruel, unfeeling king!" said the maid of honor, shrugging her shoulders. "do not abuse him," said the queen, warmly. "he was not cruel, not unfeeling. for if he had been so, he would have sundered the tie which bound him to the unloved woman who had been forced upon him when he became king. but he was mild and gentle; he tolerated me, and i was permitted to love him and call myself his, although he was never mine. instead of banishing me, as he might have done, he endured me, and accorded me the royal honors due his wife. true, i have not often seen him, and have very rarely spoken to him; but yet i heard and knew of him, and he never permitted my birthday to pass without writing me a letter of congratulation. once, however--once he went so far in his goodness as to hold the new-year's reception here in schönhausen, because an accident which happened to my foot prevented my coming to berlin. oh, i shall never forget that day, for it was the only time the king visited me here; and since then it seems to me that the sun has never set, but still gilds the apartments through which frederick had wandered. on that day," continued the queen, with a sad smile, absorbed in her recollections of the past, "on that day, something occurred which astonished the court, and was talked of in all berlin. the king, who, on similar occasions in the city, had only looked at and saluted me from a distance, walked up to my side, extended his hand, and inquired after my health in the most kind and feeling manner. i was so confused and bewildered by this unexpected happiness, that i almost fainted. my heart beat wildly, and i found no strength to utter a single word in reply, that is, if my tears were not an answer.[24] but since that day the king has never spoken to me. the words, however, which he then uttered have always resounded in my ear like sweet music, and will lull me to sleep in the hour of death." "oh," exclaimed the maid of honor, in astonishment and indignation, "how can it be possible to love in such a manner?" the queen, who had entirely forgotten that she was not speaking to herself, and that another listened to her plaintive wail, raised her head quickly, her blue eyes sparkling as if she had been but seventeen instead of seventy years old. "how could it be possible not to love in such a manner, when one loved frederick the great?" said she, proudly. "i had made this love my life, my religion, my hope of immortality. i gave to this love my whole soul, my every thought and feeling; and it gave me, in return, joyful resignation and the strength to endure. without this, my great, my beautiful love, i would have perished in the solitude and desolation of my being; but from it my life derived its support, its enthusiasm, and its perpetual youth. years have whitened my hair and wrinkled my countenance, but in the poor, miserable body, in the breast of this old woman, throbs the heart of a young girl; and it bears me on with its youthful love, through and beyond all time and trouble, to those heights where i will once more behold him, and where he will, perhaps, requite the love he here despised. love never grows old; when the heart is filled with it, years vanish like fleeting dreams, and it encircles mortality with the halo of undying youth! therefore it must not surprise you, julie, that the old woman you see before you can speak of her love. it was the love of my youth, and still makes me young. and now go, my child, and leave me alone with my recollections, and the great dead! i have much to say to him that god only may hear! go, my child, and if, at some future day, you should love and suffer, think of this hour!" she greeted the young lady with a gentle wave of the hand, and as the maid of honor left the room she saw the queen fall on her knees. slowly, and with her head bowed down, julie von voss walked through the adjoining rooms to her own apartments. "i will never love like this, and consequently never suffer like this," said she to herself. "i cannot comprehend how one can lose and forget one's self so completely in another, particularly when this other person does not love as ardently--as ardently as i am loved by--" she stopped and blushed, and a slight tremor ran through her being. "i should like to know whether he loves me as passionately as this woman has loved her husband, whether--but," exclaimed she, interrupting her train of thought, "i had entirely forgotten that his valet is waiting to deliver a message." immediately on entering her parlor, she rang the bell, and ordered her chambermaid to show the valet, rietz, who was waiting in the queen's antechamber, up to her apartments at once. she then walked slowly to and fro; she sighed profoundly, and her lips whispered in low tones, "i do not love him! no, i do not love him; and yet i will no longer be able to resist him, for they are all against me; even my own relatives are ready to sacrifice me. that they may become great, i am to be trodden in the dust; and that they may live in honor, i am to live in shame! but i will not!" she cried, in a loud voice; and she stood proudly erect, and held up her beautiful head. "no, i will not live in shame; every respectable woman shall not have the right to point the finger of scorn at me, and place me in the same category with the brazen-faced wife of the abominable rietz! they shall not have the right to call julie von voss the king's mistress! no, they shall not, and--" "the king's privy chamberlain," announced the maid, and behind her rietz walked into the parlor. "poor figaro has been compelled to wait a long time, my lady," said he, with a mocking smile. "you have treated figaro's master, who longs for an answer, very cruelly." "i did not ask your opinion of my conduct," said the maid of honor, haughtily. "you are the king's messenger; speak, therefore, and execute his majesty's commands." "ah, this is not a question of commands, but of entreaties only--the king's entreaties. his majesty begs that he may be permitted to see you after he has paid his visit of condolence to the widowed queen." "etiquette requires that i shall be present when her majesty, the widowed queen, receives his visit. and if his majesty desires to speak with me, i beg that he will graciously avail himself of that opportunity." "ah, but that will not answer," said rietz, with a smile. "when his majesty expresses a desire to visit my lady here in her own apartments, he probably has something to say, not intended for the ears of other ladies. perhaps his majesty wishes to speak with my lady about the widowed queen and her condition, and to ask your advice as to the proper arrangement of her household. i believe the king intends to place it on a far better footing, for he spoke a few days since with real indignation of the paltry salary received by queen elizabeth christine's maids of honor--hardly sufficient to give them a decent support. the king will consider himself in duty bound to raise the salaries of these ladies; and you would certainly confer a great pleasure on his majesty by making known to him the amount you desire, and command for yourself. and you must not hesitate to mention a very considerable sum, for his majesty is generous, and will be happy to fulfil your wishes. it would, perhaps, be well for my lady to give me some hints in advance, in order that i may prepare his majesty. i shall be inexpressibly happy if my lady will permit me to be her most devoted servant, and it might also be of great advantage to her, for all berlin and potsdam--yes, all prussia, knows that i am the king's factotum." "did his majesty commission you to utter all these impertinences?" asked julie, coldly. "how so,--impertinences?" asked rietz, bewildered by the proud and inconsiderate manner of the lady, who regarded him, the almighty factotum, so contemptuously. "i have not, i certainly did not--" "silence! i listened to you out of respect for the king. and now, out of respect for myself, i command you to leave the room immediately. i will ask his majesty if he authorized his valet to tell me any thing else than that the king intended to honor me with a visit. go!" she proudly turned her back on the chamberlain, and walked through the room. she felt that she was suddenly held back. it was rietz, who had caught hold of her dress, and he now sank on his knees, and looked up to her imploringly. "forgiveness, my lady, forgiveness! i have surely expressed myself badly, for otherwise my lady could not desire to leave the most devoted of her servants in anger. i only intended to say, that--" "that you are the wedded husband of wilhelmine enke," cried the young lady with a mocking peal of laughter; and she withdrew her garment as violently as if a venomous serpent had touched it. she then left the room, still laughing, and without even once looking at the kneeling chamberlain. rietz arose from his knees; and his countenance, before all smiles, now assumed a dark and malignant expression. he shook his fist threateningly toward the door through which she had left the room, and his lips muttered imprecations. and now he smiled grimly. "yes," said he, "i am wilhelmine enke's husband, and that will be your ruin at some future day! threaten and mock me as you please; you are, nevertheless, nothing better than the bird that flies into the net to eat the alluring red berries placed there to entice it to inevitable destruction. the net is set, the red berries are scattered around; and you will not resist the temptation, my charming bird; you will be caught, and will perish!" and, laughing maliciously, he turned and left the room. the maid of honor, julie von voss, had not heard his malignant words, and yet her heart was filled with anxiety and tormenting disquiet; and when the door opened, and her brother, the royal chamberlain, charles von voss, entered, she cried out in terror, and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands. "but, julie," said her brother, angrily, "what does this childishness mean--what is the matter? why does my presence terrify you?" "i do not know," said she, "but when you appeared in the doorway, just now, it seemed to me that i saw the tempter coming to allure me to sin and shame!" "very flattering, indeed," observed her brother, "but there may be something in it. only you forget to add that the tempter intends to offer you a world. what did satan say to christ when he had led him up a mountain and showed him the world at his feet? 'this will i give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' julie, i also come to offer you a part of the world; to lay a kingdom, a crown, and a king at your feet." "have you seen the king? has he spoken with you?" asked julie, breathlessly. "he sends me in advance, as _postillon d'amour_, and will soon be here himself." "i will not see him," cried the maid of honor, stretching out both hands as if to ward off his approach. "no, never! he shall not visit me; i will lock my door, and not open it until he has gone, until he ceases to pursue and torment me!" "my dear," said he, quietly, "i have come to speak with you seriously. you must now come to some decision; or rather, you must decide to do that which your family, which reason, policy, ambition, and pride counsel. you have bound the king in your toils with admirable ingenuity, and i congratulate you. no lion-tamer can tame the king of the desert more skilfully, and with greater success, than you have tamed your royal lion, who follows your footsteps like a lamb. this taming has been going on for three years, and your cruelty has only had the effect of making him more tender and affectionate. but there are limits to every thing, my discreet sister; and if the rope is drawn too tightly, it breaks." "if it would only do so!" cried julie, despairingly. "that is exactly my desire, my object. oh, my brother, you and all my cruel relatives deceive yourselves about me; and what you consider the finesse of coquetry, is only the true and open expression of my feelings! for three years the king has pursued me with his love, and for three years i have met his advances with coldness and indifference. in every manner, by word, look, and gesture, have i given him to understand that his love was annoying, and his attentions offensive. oh, that i could fly from this unendurable, fearful love, to the uttermost ends of the world! but i cannot go, for i am poor, and have not the means to live elsewhere, and free myself from the terrible fetters in which you are all endeavoring to bind me!" "and besides, my dear sister, acknowledge that your own heart persuades you to remain. you love the king?" "no," she cried, passionately, "no, i do not love him, although i must admit that i have seen no man i liked better. but i do not love him; my heart beats no quicker when he approaches, my soul does not long for him when he is at a distance; and at times, when the king is at my side, a terrible feeling of anxiety creeps over me, and i wish to flee, and cry out to the whole world--'rescue me, rescue me from the king!' no, i do not love the king; and if i meet his advances coldly, it is not from policy, but because my heart prompts me to do so. therefore, renounce all thought of winning me over to your plans. i will not become the associate of wilhelmine enke!" "and truly you shall not," said her brother, earnestly. "on the contrary, my beautiful and discreet sister, you shall displace this unworthy person; you shall become the benefactress of prussia, and, through you, virtue and morality shall once more stand in good repute at the court of our young and amiable king." the eyes of the beautiful maid of honor sparkled, and a soft color suffused itself over her cheeks. "if that were possible," she cried, in joyous tones--"yes, if i could succeed in delivering the king from this unworthy bondage, if i could make this hateful person harmless, this indeed were an object for which much could be endured." "you hate her, then, this wilhelmine rietz?" "and who should not hate her?" asked julie, passionately. "she is the disgrace of her sex; she heaps dishonor on the head of our noble and genial king; she has caused his wife so many tears, and--" "and you, too, is it not so?" asked her brother, smiling. "my beautiful julie, you have betrayed yourself, you are jealous. but one is jealous only when one loves. do not longer deny it--you love the king." "no, no, i do not, i will not love him," she cried, "for shame would kill me. oh, my brother, i conjure you, do not demand of me that i deliver myself over to shame! take pity on me, do not force me to abandon my quiet and peaceful life. i will be contented to remain here in this solitude at the side of the unhappy queen, to pass my days in _ennui_ and loneliness. i am not ambitious, and do not crave splendor; permit me therefore to live in seclusion." "no, my dear sister, we cannot permit you to do so," said the chamberlain, shrugging his shoulders. "if it concerned you alone, you could dispose of yourself as you thought fit. but behind you stands your family--your family, which has been brought down in the world by all sorts of misfortunes, and is far from occupying the position to which it is entitled, and to which i, above all things, wish to see it restored, for i acknowledge that i am ambitious, my dear sister, and i desire to achieve eminence. i am now on the highway to success, and i do not intend that you shall arrest, but rather that you shall promote, my progress. if you reject the king's addresses, of course the whole family will fall into disfavor, and that would not be agreeable, either to myself or to my dear uncle, the master of ceremonies of the widowed queen. he wishes to become the king's master of ceremonies, and i wish to become a cabinet minister. apart from this, the family coffers are sadly in need of replenishment. our ancestral castle is in a crumbling condition, the forests have been cut down, the land is badly cultivated, and the farmhouses and stables must be rebuilt, for they are only miserable ruins, in which the half-starved cattle find no protection from the weather; and it is your mission to restore the old family von voss to its former splendor." "by my dishonor, by my criminality!" sighed julia von voss. "oh, my mother, my dear mother, why did you leave me, and fly to heaven from all this degradation! if you were here, you would protect me, and not suffer me to be so cruelly tempted." "you remind me of our dear mother at the right time, julie. do you remember what she told you on her deathbed?" "yes, my brother, i do," she replied, in a low voice. "she said: 'you will not be an orphan, for you have your brother to take care of and protect you. i transfer all my rights to him; for the future, he will be the head of the family, and you must love, honor, and obey him as such.'" "'i transfer all my rights to him; for the future, he will be the head of the family, and you must love, honor, and obey him as such,'" repeated her brother, in an elevated voice. "do not forget this, my sister. i, as the head of the family, demand of you that you become the benefactress of your family, of your queen, and of your whole country. a grand and holy task devolves upon you. you are to liberate the land, the queen, and the king himself, from the domination of sin and indecorum. in a word, you are to displace this rietz and her abominable husband, and inaugurate the reign of virtue and morality in this court. truly, this is a noble mission, and one well worthy of my beautiful sister." "it will not succeed," said the maid of honor. "the king will never consent to banish this hateful rietz." "the greater would be the honor, if you succeeded in liberating the king from this scandalous woman, the queen from this serpent, and the country from these vampires. ah, the whole royal family, yes, all prussia, would bless you, if you could overthrow this rietz and her self-styled husband!" "yes," said julie, in a low voice, "it would be a sublime consummation; but i should have to purchase it with my own degradation. and that i will not--cannot do. brother, my dear brother, be merciful, and do not demand of me what is impossible and horrible. the daughter of my mother can never become a king's mistress!" "and who said that you should? truly, i would be the last to require that of you. no, not the mistress, but the wife of the king. you shall become his wedded wife; and your rightful marriage shall be blessed by a minister of the reformed church!" "but that is impossible!" exclaimed the maid of honor, whose eyes sparkled with joy, against her will, "that cannot be. the queen lives, and she is the king's wedded wife." "yes, the wedded wife of the right hand," said her brother, quietly; "but the king, like every other mortal, has two hands; and he has a privilege which other mortals have not--the privilege of wedding a wife on the left hand." "impossible, quite impossible, as long as the wife of the right hand lives!" exclaimed julie. "of that, the consistory of church matters is alone competent to decide," replied her brother, with composure; "or rather, i expressed myself badly, the consistory has only a deliberative voice; and the decision rests with the king alone, who, in our country, represents the church, and is its head--the evangelical pope. it is his province to say whether such a marriage of the left hand is possible, notwithstanding a marriage of the right hand. demand it of him; make it a condition. remember the words which the beautiful gabrielle said to henry the fourth, when he inspected her dwelling, and asked the lady he adored, 'which is the way to your chamber?' 'sire,' she replied, 'the way to my chamber goes through the church.' remember this when you speak to the king." "be assured, i will remember it," cried julie, with glowing cheeks, and a proud, joyous smile. "i will make my conditions; and only when the king fulfils them will i be his, and--" "and, why do you pause, and why is your face crimsoned with blushes all at once? ah! you hear an equipage rolling up the avenue, and your tender heart says the king, your future husband, is approaching. yes, my beautiful sister," continued her brother, as he stepped to the window and looked out; "yes, it is the king. now prepare yourself, my wise and discreet julie; prepare to give your royal lover a worthy reception. for, of course, you will receive him? and i may tell--i may tell his majesty that you welcome his visit joyfully?" "no, oh no," murmured the maid of honor, with trembling lips. "i am not prepared; i am not composed; i cannot receive the king now!" "no childishness," said her brother, severely. "you will have sufficient time to compose yourself. the king must first pay his respects to the widowed queen, and the visit of condolence will last at least a quarter of an hour. i must now leave you; but remember that the fortunes of your family, and of the whole country, are in your hands, and act accordingly!" he left the room hastily, without awaiting a reply, and went down to the grand audience-chamber, where the courtiers and cavaliers were assembled. the king had already retired with the widowed queen to her library. on entering the chamber, he immediately walked up to his intimate acquaintance, bischofswerder, the newly-created colonel, who had accompanied the king to schönhausen. "it will succeed," said he, in a low voice, "our great ends will be attained; we will conquer our enemies, and secure dominion for ourselves and the invisible fathers. my sister loves the king, but she has been virtuously reared, and would rather renounce the king and her love, than sacrifice her moral principles." "she is, therefore, the more worthy of the high mission to which she has been called by the will of the invisible," said bischofswerder, emphatically. "she shall rescue our loved master and king from the arms of sin, and lead him back to the path of virtue with the hand of love, sanctified and consecrated by these noble ends." "but she demands another consecration. the consecration of a lawful marriage. if this can be procured, my sister will always be our obedient and devoted friend, and, through her instrumentality, we--that is, the invisible--will establish our rule." "her desire is certainly a bold one," said bischofswerder. "but we must endeavor to fulfil it. we will speak with our wise friend wöllner on this subject; and will also lay the noble young lady's request at the feet of the sublime grand-kophta, and master of the invisible lodge." "is he here, the great grand-kophta?" asked charles von voss, eagerly. "then what the circle-director announced yesterday in the assembly was really true, and the grand-kophta is in our midst." "he was with us in that assembly, we were all enveloped in the atmosphere of his glory, but it is only given to the initiated of the first rank, to know when the invisible is near. oh, my friend, i pitied you yesterday, while in the assembly; lamented that you should still stand in the antechamber of the temple, and not yet have been permitted to enter the inner sanctuary." "but what must i do before i am permitted to enter?" asked charles von voss, in imploring tones. "oh, tell me, my dear, my enviable, my illustrious friend, what must i do to advance myself and become a participant of the inestimable privilege of being permitted to enter the inner sanctuary, and belong to the band of the initiated?" "you must belong to the band of the believing, the hopeful, and the obedient. you must prove to the invisible, by unconditional submission, that you are an obedient instrument; and then you will be called!" "and by what token will i know that such is the case?" "you will receive a visible sign of the satisfaction of the invisible. when you and we succeed, with his assistance, in establishing the dominion of the invisible so firmly that he will rule prussia; when rietz and her whole faction of the unbelieving are made harmless and destroyed; when, through your sister's instrumentality, virtue and propriety once more regulate and sanctify the king's private life--then, my friend, the invisible will give you a visible token of his satisfaction, and will make the chamberlain von voss, the minister of state von voss." "oh, my dear, my mighty friend!" cried the chamberlain joyfully; "i will do all that the superiors desire. i will have no will of my own. i will be an instrument in their hands in order that i may finally--" "the king!" cried the chamberlain of the day, as he threw open the folding doors of the antechamber. "the king!" and amid the profound silence of his courtiers, who bowed their proud heads respectfully, king frederick william entered the audience chamber, on his return from the visit of condolence paid to the mourning widow of frederick. he cast a quick glance around the chamber, and, observing the chamberlain von voss, beckoned him to approach. in obedience to the king's command, the chamberlain walked forward. "well," said the king in a low voice, "what does your sister say?" "your majesty, she said but little to me, but she will have a great deal to say to your majesty." "she is then ready to receive me?" said the king, his countenance radiant with joy. "your majesty, my sister is awaiting you, and i will conduct you to her, if your majesty will graciously follow." "come," replied the king, and, without honoring his courtiers with a glance, the king followed the chamberlain von voss out of the audience-chamber. chapter vi. the alliance. wilhelmine rietz had passed the whole day in a state of great excitement. king frederick was dead! public rumor had communicated this intelligence; it had flown on the wings of the wind from sans-souci to potsdam, from potsdam to charlottenburg and berlin, and thence to all the towns and villages of the prussian monarchy. king frederick the great was dead! this report was uttered in wailing accents all over the country; and filled the eyes of millions of faithful subjects and admirers of frederick with tears. this report also conveyed the tidings to the beloved of the prince royal, that she was now the beloved of a king. but wilhelmine would have much preferred to hear it from himself; to receive a visible proof that her image still filled the king's heart, and that the clouds of incense rising around the new monarchy had not dimmed the recollections of the past. long hours of anxious expectation passed, and when the clock struck the hour of noon and no messenger had arrived, she was seized with unutterable fear. at last at about two o'clock, her son alexander arrived at charlottenburg, with his tutor mr. von chapuis, "at the king's command," as the tutor announced. nor could he give her any further information, for he had not seen the king himself but had received this command from the mouth of the valet, rietz. "that is a bad sign, a very bad sign!" murmured wilhelmine to herself when she was again alone. "he sends my son to a distance, in order to give no offence to his new court at potsdam. he does not love me; if he did, he would have the courage to defy the prejudices of the world. ah! he loves me no longer, and henceforth i will be nothing more than the despised, discarded mistress, to be greeted with derisive laughter by every passer-by, and to have cause for congratulation if she can hide her shame in some obscure corner of the earth, where she might escape the scornful looks and stinging words of mankind. but this shall never be; no, i will not be discarded--will not be trodden in the dust. and now, wilhelmine," she continued, with sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, "now prove that you are no weak, no ordinary creature; prove that you possess wisdom, courage and energy. fight for your existence, for your future, for your love! for i do love him, and i cannot live without him. and i will not live without him!" she cried loudly and emphatically. "he is the father of my children; he is my hope and my future. without him i am a despised creature; with him i am a lady of distinction, who is flattered and courted in the most devoted manner; and only abused and ridiculed behind her back. but continue to abuse and ridicule me, my triumph will be all the greater, when you must nevertheless bend the knee and do homage to the hated person. i have borne and endured a great deal for the poor prince-royal frederick william, and now i demand compensation and reward at the hands of the rich king frederick william. no, i will not be put aside! as long as i live, i will fight for my existence, and fight with the weapons of strategy and force, of intrigue and flattery. ah, i rejoice in the prospect. yes, i really rejoice in it! at all events, it will lend an additional charm to life, and be a change and a diversion!" "the privy-chamberlain and treasurer of the king!" announced the servant, entering the room. "who is that?" asked wilhelmine in astonishment. "i know no such gentleman." "i am the gentleman, my dear wife, my adored wilhelmine," said rietz, laughing loudly, as he followed the servant into the room. "in me, my dear wife, you see the privy-chamberlain and treasurer, fresh as a newly-baked loaf from the oven of royal favor." "leave the room, jean," said wilhelmine, who, impelled perhaps by curiosity, gave himself the appearance of being busily occupied in arranging the room. "no, my dear wife," said rietz, beckoning to the servant, "have the goodness to permit jean to remain a moment until i have given him my orders.--jean, i am hungry, and feel an irresistible inclination to eat. bring me something enjoyable, right away--for instance, a goose-liver pie, or a pheasant, or both. you can also bring some caviar and a piece of venison. and then have a bottle of champagne brought up and placed on ice; it is abominably warm to-day, and i need something cooling. be quick, jean." the servant made no reply, but looked inquiringly at his mistress. rietz caught this look, and laughed loudly. "i really believe this simpleton entertains the daring idea of not obeying me, his master!" "excuse me, sir," murmured the servant, timidly, "but my services were engaged by this lady." "yes, certainly; but you well know, you rascal, that i am the master, and that this lady is my wife, and--" "enough," interrupted wilhelmine, gravely. "set the table in the dining-room, jean, and be quick!" "well spoken, wilhelmine; let me kiss you for it, my treasure!" cried rietz, walking with extended arms toward his wife, while the servant was opening the door. but the door had scarcely closed when he let his arms fall, and recoiled timidly from wilhelmine, who stood before him with flashing eyes. "sir," said she, her voice trembling with anger; "sir, i forbid you to take such liberties, and use such familiar language in the presence of my servant." "but, madame," replied rietz, smiling, "it is only in the presence of your servant that i can use such language; and it seems to me that it suits my rôle very well. i have the honor to figure before the world as your husband, consequently i should play my rôle respectably before men, and prove that we are a happy and contented pair. the wickedness and malice of mankind are great; and if men should observe that i spoke to you with less tenderness, your enemies would certainly spread the report, that we were living together unhappily." "i must inform you, sir, that i have no desire whatever to jest," cried wilhelmine, impatiently. "have the goodness to be serious. now, that we are alone, i beg that you will not attempt to keep up the absurd farce of our so-called marriage." "and bad enough it is for me that it is only a farce," sighed rietz, impressively. "i would--" the angry look which wilhelmine bestowed upon him, repressed his words, and he quickly assumed a melancholy, submissive manner. "i am silent, madame, i am silent," said he, bowing profoundly, and with an air of deep pathos. "i am your most submissive servant, nothing else; and, having now paid my homage to the sun, i will retire, as its splendor has dazzled my eyes." he crossed his arms before his breast, bowed to the earth before his mistress, as the slaves do in the east, and then arose and walked rapidly toward the door. "where are you going, sir?" asked wilhelmine. "why do you not remain here?" "i cannot, mistress," said he, humbly. "the moor has done his duty! the moor can go! so it reads at least in frederick schiller's new piece, the one given at the theatre a short time ago." "but you have not yet done your duty," said wilhelmine, smiling involuntarily. "you have not yet delivered your message." "what message?" asked rietz, with a pretence of astonishment. "his majesty's message. for he it was, undoubtedly, who sent you here." "you are right," said rietz, with an air of indifference. "yes, that is true. i had forgotten it. good heavens! i have received so many commissions to-day, and been sent to so many ladies, that i forget the one in the other. i am now playing a very important rôle. i am the figaro of my master almaviva--the figaro who has to help his master in carrying off his beautiful cousin. you know the piece, of course, the delightfully good-for-nothing piece, that created such a furor in france, and consequently here with us also?" "yes, i do, rietz; and i beg you not to stretch me on the rack with your drollery! what did the king say? what messages did he entrust to you?" "oh, madame! you cannot require of me that i should betray count almaviva's confidence, and impart to you the messages entrusted to me?" cried figaro rietz, with noble indignation. "i have only to impart that which concerns my beautiful susanna; and that is, his majesty is coming here this evening, and his rooms are to be held in readiness. he will first take tea, and then adjourn to the little laboratory to do some little cooking and brewing." wilhelmine's countenance, before bright and animated, darkened as the privy-chamberlain uttered these last words. "the king intends to work in the laboratory? then he is not coming alone?" "he is coming alone, but i expect his assistants and teachers, the two great heroes of the invisible lodge, will follow at a later hour, in order to make a little 'hocus pocus' for his majesty--that is, i expressed myself badly--i wished to say, in order to work with his majesty in the secret sciences. yes, the two great luminaries are coming, and if i could be permitted to give you my advice--but no, so wise and enlightened a lady as yourself can have no need of the advice of so foolish and ridiculous a fellow as i am. i am therefore silent, and will now retire, in order to strengthen my body at least, as my mind is of so hopelessly weak a constitution, that all endeavors in that direction would be thrown away. my gracious queen, i beg that you will now kindly dismiss me!" he made a ceremonious bow, and then retired towards the door, walking backwards. "rietz, remain!" commanded wilhelmine, imperiously. "impossible, my queen. my message is delivered; and the moor not only can, but will go." "remain, rietz; i beg you to do so," said wilhelmine, advancing a step nearer. "when the stomach commands," said rietz, shrugging his shoulders, "the entreaties of the most beautiful of women are of no avail." "well, then go and eat," cried wilhelmine, impatiently. "and when you have done eating, come back to my room!" "nor can i do that, my queen. i must then ride to potsdam, where, by the king's command, i am to hold a secret and important conference with her majesty, the queen, that is, with her majesty of the right hand. i must, therefore, hoist anchor and sail again as soon as i have eaten, and--" "well then," said wilhelmine, with determination, "i will accompany you to the dining-room, and we will converse while you are eating." "bravo! bravo! that was what i desired!" cried rietz, laughing. "the servants shall see in how heavenly an understanding we live together; and how careful my wife is not to lose her husband's society for a moment. give me your arm, madam, and lead me to the dining-room." with a forced smile she took his arm, and permitted him to conduct her through the parlor to the dining-room. jean had served up all manner of delicacies on a little table, and was now occupied, at the sideboard, in breaking ice for the champagne. "put a bottle of rhine wine on the ice, too, jean," cried rietz, imperiously, as he seated himself comfortably in the chair, leaving his "wife" to find one for herself and bring it up to the table, at which he had already made an assault on a truffle-pie. "magnificent!" said he, after eating a few morsels, "i must tell you, my dearest wilhelmine, there is nothing better than a truffle-pie!" wilhelmine turned impatiently to the servant, who was turning the wine in the freezer: "you can now go, jean, the gentleman will wait on himself." "and my champagne!" exclaimed rietz. but, with an imperious gesture, wilhelmine dismissed the servant. "now we are alone," said wilhelmine. "now you can speak. you wished to give me your advice." "madam," rejoined rietz, as he carried a savory morsel to his mouth; "madam, at this moment i can advise you to do but one thing, and that is, to try this truffle-pie, it is truly magnificent!" "you are cruel," cried wilhelmine, "you torture me!" "say rather, madam, that you are cruel," said rietz, rising from the table to go after the champagne. "it is truly cruel to compel a man to arise, in the midst of the delights of the table, and wait on himself! champagne loses its flavor when one has to pour it out himself!" "i will wait on you, sir!" cried wilhelmine, rising with vivacity, and taking the bottle in her hands. rietz nodded complacently. "that is right. that is piquant, and will season my repast. the almighty queen of the left hand waits on her submissive husband of the left hand. the mistress becomes the slave, the slave the master! this is a charming riddle, is it not? but i tell you, madame, it is not the last riddle we will propound! oh, very many riddles will now be propounded; and some people would be very happy if they could find the right solution." "you wished to give me good advice concerning the two favorites," said wilhelmine, with a smile, that cost her proud heart much humiliation. "speak, therefore, my dear rietz! give me your advice!" rietz held his glass up to the light, and gazed smilingly at the rising bubbles. "that reminds me of my old friend, the burgomaster of stargard, the dear place of my nativity. the good burgomaster funk, was a true child of pomerania, who despised high-german, and would have spoken low-german, even with the king. speaking low-german, and eating dinner was his passion. and i have often thought, when i saw him sitting at the dinner-table, with so reverent and pious a countenance, that the old gentleman fancied himself in church, administering the sacrament as a priest. he applied himself with such heavenly tranquillity to the delights of the table, permitting nothing in the world to disturb him while so engaged." "but i cannot comprehend what the recollections of your happy youth have to do with the advice you desired to give." "you will soon do so, my queen," said rietz, slowly emptying his glass. "and yet permit me to dwell a little longer on the recollections of my dear old master. for you must know that this good old gentleman was my master; under him i learned the arts of a valet, writer, and confidant, and all the little artifices and stratagems by which a valet makes himself his master's factotum. truly the king is greatly indebted to the burgomaster; without him he would never have been the possessor of so excellent a factotum as the privy-chamberlain and treasurer rietz. at the same time, i learned from my master how to become a gourmand; learned what precious knowledge, and how much practical study, were necessary to educate a man up to this sublime standard, and entitle him to the proud appellation of gourmand. my old master, who deservedly bore this title, inculcated in me the most beautiful and strict principles. in the midst of our conversation, and while the old gentleman was digesting, slowly imbibing his delicious mocha, and blowing clouds of smoke from his long pipe, it sometimes occurred that some one of the burghers of the little city would come, in his necessity, to his burgomaster to obtain advice or assistance. then you should have seen his anger and rage. he would strike the table with his fist, and cry furiously: 'vat, i give advice! after dinner, and for noting!'" "ah," exclaimed wilhelmine, "now i begin to understand!" "that is fortunate, indeed," said rietz, laughing; and he held out his empty glass to wilhelmine that she might fill it. "then you begin to understand that the phrase 'after dinner, and for nothing,' is very beautiful and appropriate?" "yes, and i will give you a proof of it at once! sir, what do you ask for your good advice?" "bravo, bravo!" cried rietz. "well sung, my prima donna! now we shall understand each other; and with your permission we will proceed to talk seriously. madame, will you form an offensive and defensive alliance with me? do not reply yet! i have no desire whatever that you should buy the cat in the bag; first hear what i have to say, and then make up your mind. we are now at the beginning of a new era; and to most men the future is as a book written in mysterious and illegible characters. but i think i can decipher it, and i will tell you what it contains. i read in this book that prussia is now governed by a king who can do anything but govern himself, and who is like soft wax in the hands of those who know how to manage him." "how dare you speak so disrespectfully of your king?" cried wilhelmine. "madame," said rietz, shrugging his shoulders, "give yourself no trouble! to his valet and to his mistress--pardon me for this word, my queen--the greatest king is but an ordinary man; and when we two are alone, we need stand on no ceremony. the king, i say, will be ruled over. and the only question is, by whom? the question is, shall the valet and the mistress rule over the happy and prosperous kingdom of prussia, or shall they leave this difficult but remunerative business to the rosicrucians, to the invisible fathers, and to their visible sons, bischofswerder and wöllner." "if they do that," cried wilhelmine, with vivacity, "the mistress and the valet will be lost, they will be banished." "that is also my opinion," said rietz. "these dear rosicrucians dread our influence. they know that we are both too wise to believe in the hocus pocus, and that it sometimes affords us pleasure to enlighten the king's mind on the subject of these mysterious fellows and their jugglery. i, for my part, hate these pious hypocrites, these wise fools. it is as impossible for me to live together with them in friendship, as it is for the honest dog and sneaking cat to sojourn harmoniously in one kennel. and i account it one of my greatest pleasures when i can sometimes give them a good blow, and tear out a piece of their sheepskin, in order to show the king that a wolf is disguised in sheep's clothing." "i feel exactly as you do on this subject," cried wilhelmine, laughing. "i find it impossible to accept their offers of friendship. they have frequently attempted to make me their ally, but i wish to have nothing to do with the invisible fathers of the inner temple; i prefer the visible sons in the outer halls, for we, at least, know what they are!" "you are a divine woman," cried the chamberlain, in delight. "if you were not my wife i should certainly fall in love with you. it is fortunate, however, that you are my wife, for lovers are blind, and it behooves us both to keep our eyes open to avoid being caught in the snares which will be laid for us in great plenty by our pious fowlers. 'they or we;' this will be the watchword throughout the glorious reign of our king. the pharisees and rosicrucians, or--may i pronounce the word, my enchantress?" "yes, my friend, pronounce the word!" "well, then! the watchword is: 'the pharisees and rosicrucians, or the libertines and mistresses!' i cast my lot with the latter party, for with them good dinners and brilliant fêtes are the order of the day. with them pleasure reigns, and joy is queen." "i am with you, my friend. death and destruction to the pharisees and rosicrucians!" "long live the libertines and mistresses! they shall rule over prussia! they shall guide the ship of state; and we, wilhelmine enke, we two will be the leaders and masters of this merry band! we will fight with each other and for each other; and the pharisees and rosicrucians are, and shall ever be, our common enemies! give me your hand on this, my queen!" "here is my hand. yes, the pharisees and rosicrucians are, and shall ever be, our common enemies!" "you will aid me, and i you! we will protect and watch over each other. our interests are identical, what furthers yours furthers mine. you, my beautiful wilhelmine, are ambitious, and are not contented with my well-sounding name. you aim higher, and i do not blame you, for a crown would become you well, although it were only the crown of a countess." "that would suffice," said wilhelmine, smiling. "and you, my friend, what do you aspire to?" "i am a very modest man, and decorations and titles have no charms for me. i do not wish ever to become more than i now am; but that, my queen, i would like to remain. i have no desire to be dispossessed of my situation; on the contrary, i desire to make of it a right warm and comfortable nest." "and i will procure you the necessary down," cried wilhelmine, laughing. "very well, but it must be eider-down, my love, for that is the softest. i love the exquisite and the excellent; i am a gourmand in all things. if there is one thing i could wish for, it would be that my whole life might consist of one long dinner, and i remain sitting at the savory, richly-laden table, until compelled to leave it for the grave. i am not ambitious, nor am i miserly; but money i must have, much money. in order to lead a comfortable and agreeable life one must have money, a great deal of money, an immense quantity of money. my motto is, therefore, 'my whole life one good dinner, and--after dinner, no advice for nothing!'" "i consider this a wise motto, and, although i cannot make it my own, i will always respect it as yours, and act in accordance with it in your interest." "that will be very agreeable," said rietz. "i will then be able to realize my ideal." "and in what does your ideal consist, if i may ask the question?" "my ideal is a house of my own, elegantly and luxuriously furnished, attentive and deferential servants, an exquisite cook, and the most choice dinners, with four covers always ready for agreeable, gay, and influential guests, who must be selected each day. do you know, my queen, what is essential to the realization of my ideal? in the first place, the king must give me a house just large enough to make me a comfortable dwelling. i know of such a house. it stands at the entrance of the park of sans-souci. it has only five chambers, a parlor, a cellar, a kitchen, and several servants' rooms. that is just the house for a modest man like myself; and i wish to have it. and then rich clients are required, petitioners for decorations and titles, who come to me for counsel, supposing the king's confidential chamberlain can gratify their longings, if they only cajole him and show him some attentions. for instance, if this nice new house were mine, i would furnish one room only, and that sparingly, letting all the others stand empty. i would then show my visitors my dear little house, and it would be strange, indeed, if it were not soon handsomely furnished. to accomplish this, nothing is wanted but your assistance, my gracious wife and queen." "and in what manner shall i assist you, my dear philosopher?" "in this manner, my adored: by sending the suitors who come to you, to me--that is, those suitors who desire decorations, titles, or a noble coat-of-arms; for with politics i will have nothing to do. i only speculate on the foolishness of mankind. therefore, let it be well understood, you are to send the foolish to me with their petitions--to tell them that decorations and titles are my specialty, and that i alone can effect anything with the king in such matters. in doing this, you not only send me clients who furnish my house, but you also enhance my respectability. you make an important person of me, to whom great deference must be shown, and who must be courted and flattered. the natural consequence will be, that i will have humble and devoted servants, and be able to secure agreeable and influential guests for my dinners. for i need scarcely inform you, that it would afford me no entertainment whatever simply to fill empty stomachs at my table. on the contrary, i desire to have guests to whom eating is a science, and who do not regard a good pasty merely as an article of food, but rather as a superior enjoyment. will you help me to attain all this?" "yes, i will, my friend. but now tell me what services you propose to render in return!" "i will be your obedient servant, your sincere and discreet friend, and your ally in life and death. when diplomatists and politicians apply to me for my good offices, i will refer them to you. i will always have your interests at heart. if bischofswerder and wöllner should ever succeed in poisoning the king's mind against you, or in depriving you of his favor, i will lend a helping hand in thrusting these pious lights into the shade, where they belong. you can depend on me in all things. i will represent your interests, as if they were my own, and as if i had the honor to be in reality what i, unfortunately, only appear to be, the husband of the beautiful and amiable wilhelmine rietz. but truly, the name sounds bad, and i will assist you in exchanging it for a longer and more harmonious one. the name rietz is just long and good enough for me. it fits me snugly, like a comfortable, well-worn dressing-gown; and i prefer it to a court-dress. but for you, my fair one, we must certainly procure the title of a baroness or countess. moreover, as your disinterestedness and improvidence in money matters is well known to me, i will also consider it my sacred duty to look after your interests in this particular, and call the king's attention to your necessities from time to time. for instance, you might require a handsome palace in berlin, or a larger villa here in charlottenburg, or a magnificent set of jewelry, or an increase of income." "ah, my friend, i will be very thankful for all this," said wilhelmine, with a bewitching smile. "but what is of paramount importance is, that the king should continue to love me, or at least that he should never reject my love or discard me. i love him. he is the father of my children; he was the lover of my youth; and i can swear that i have never loved another besides him. even my worst enemies cannot say of me that i was ever untrue to the love of my youth, or that i ever had any liaison, except the one with the poor prince royal, for whom i suffered want, rather than listen to the addresses of rich and influential admirers." "that is true," said rietz, with an air of perfect gravity; "they can make you no reproaches. your life has been altogether irreproachable; and the _chronique scandaleuse_ has had nothing to report concerning you." "you are mocking me," sighed wilhelmine. "your words are well understood. you wish to say that my whole life has been one impropriety, and that i am the legitimate prey of the _chronique scandaleuse_. oh, do not deny it, you are perfectly right. i am an outcast from society; and yet it cannot be said of me, that i, like so many highly-respectable ladies, have sold my heart and hand for an advantageous marriage settlement. i only followed the dictates of my heart and my love; and the world punishes me by erecting a barrier between me and good society. but i have no intention of submitting to this any longer. why should the king's beloved stand without the barrier, while many a countess, who has sold herself, and married an unloved man for his title and his wealth, and to whom faith is but an empty fancy, stands within on consecrated ground. this barrier shall crumble before me, and i will be received within the circle of this so-called good and exclusive society. to their hatred and contempt, i am quite indifferent, but they shall at least seem to esteem and respect me. they shall not leave me in perfect solitude in the midst of the world, as if i lived on a desert island, like robinson crusoe, and had great reason to be thankful when the king sometimes took the rôle of friday and kept me company. i will be received in society; i will be the head of society; i will have parlors, where not only artists and men of intellect assemble, but to which the ladies of the best society must also come. this is my ambition; this is my dream of happiness. i will have a social position in defiance of all these so-called exclusive circles. whenever i meet these people, and see them turn aside to avoid me with a contemptuous smile, i say to myself: 'only wait, ye proud, ye virtuous! you shall yet fill wilhelmine rietz's parlors, and form the background of the brilliant picture of her power and magnificence. only wait, ye noble gentlemen, you shall yet dance attendance in wilhelmine rietz's antechamber! only wait, ye heroines of virtue, you shall one day walk arm in arm with wilhelmine rietz, and accord her the place of honor on your right hand!' you see i have consoled myself with these thoughts of the future for many years. but the future has now become the present, and the longed-for time has at last arrived when wilhelmine rietz will compel society to unbolt its portals and permit her to enter. will you assist me in this matter?" "i shall be delighted to do so," said rietz, laughing. "i will be the locksmith, who furnishes the keys to open these doors with, and if keys will not suffice, he will provide picklocks and crowbars. but, enter you shall. it will be a difficult undertaking, to be sure, but it will amuse me all the more, on that account, to assist you, and help to pull down the pride of these arrogant people. ah, i hate these people, and it will afford me immense satisfaction to see them compelled to humble themselves before you, and fawn and flatter in spite of their reluctance! yes, i will help you to ascend this mountain, but i do not desire to rise with you, i prefer to remain below in the valley, and earn an honest livelihood, as the good old proverb says." "and will become a rich man in the valley, while i will, perhaps, be struggling with debts and creditors on the heights above!" "yes," said rietz, "there will certainly be struggles, and struggles of every variety. as for your debts, i will undertake to have them all paid; and in the future your income will be so considerably increased that you will no longer be under the necessity of making debts. but what i cannot take upon myself, unaided, is the struggle with your beautiful and high-born rival. that is woman's work; there, fists are of no avail, and delicate fingers can manipulate needles with far greater efficiency." "you speak of my rival, the beautiful julie von voss." "yes, my adorable, i speak of her, and i will now prove to you that i am your friend. and i will tell what i have no right to tell. the privy-chamberlain breaks the inviolable seal of office. but what can i do? are you not my wife? and in the end, the most discreet man in the world can keep no secret from his wife! now, listen!" and in a low, suppressed voice, as if fearing the walls might hear, he told her of his mission to schönhausen, of the king's messages, and of his conversation with the beautiful maid of honor. wilhelmine listened with pallid cheeks and quivering lips, only interrupting him from time to time with a brief question, or an angry or threatening cry. chapter vii. the conditions. while this was occurring in the dining-room, jean sat in the antechamber, holding himself in readiness to answer his mistress's bell, if it should ring. but no bell rang, and all was so still, the air so warm and sultry in the little chamber, and the soft twilight had so tranquillizing an effect, that jean could no longer resist the temptation to close his eyes, and indulge in his dreams of the future. and perhaps he was dreaming, when a tall figure, completely enveloped in a black mantle, stood before him, laid his hand on his shoulder, and pronounced his name in a low voice. perhaps it was only a dream when he saw this, and heard the veiled figure utter these words in a low voice: "you belong to the third circle of the invisible lodge?" and he replied--whether in a dream or in reality, he was himself not perfectly satisfied--"yes, i belong to that circle." furthermore, the veiled figure said: "you were sent here with orders to make an exact report of all that occurs, to the circle director, and to submit to his will, in all things. do you bear this in mind?" "i am the obedient servant of the invisible," replied jean, respectfully. "i will never forget my oath; if i did, punishment would overtake, and the just anger of the invisible destroy me." "did the circle-director show you the symbol of the brotherhood?" "yes, he did." "behold the symbol," said the veiled figure, and for a moment a little triangular plate of metal shone in his open hand. "i see it," replied jean, rising, "and i know by this triangle that a brother of the higher degrees stands before me; i therefore salute you with reverence, brother superior." he bowed profoundly, but the veiled figure merely nodded in return. "do you know the sign by which the master of the order, the grand kophta is recognized?" said he, in low and piercing tones. "i do," replied jean, his voice almost inaudible, from inward agitation. the veiled figure thrust forth his hand from under the concealing mantle, and a large solitaire sparkled on his finger. "see, this is the sign," said he. jean uttered a cry of astonishment, and sank on his knees. "command me, almighty one," he murmured, "your slave has no will but yours." "arise, and be my guide," commanded the veiled figure, and jean stood up immediately. "where shall i lead, my exalted master?" "conduct me to the little room adjoining the laboratory of the present king, but by such a way that no human eye shall see, and no human ear hear me." "then, i must first beg permission," said jean, hurrying towards the door, "to assure myself that no one is in the hall." but the veiled figure followed, and held him back. "why go that way?" he asked. "why through the hall, when we can go through the door in the wall into the little passage that leads to the secret staircase?" "that is true; i had forgotten that," said jean, trembling, and looking with surprise and terror at his superior, who was so well acquainted with this strange house that he knew the secret doors and staircases. "as my master pleases; here is the door." he pressed a small, almost imperceptible knob in the wall, and a little door sprang open. "go before, and lead me," said the veiled figure, pushing jean through the entrance. "we must walk softly, and without uttering a word; the passage runs by the dining-room, where your mistress is conversing with the king's privy-chamberlain, and we might be heard. i will, therefore, give you my command here. you will lead me through the passage and down the staircase. with the key which you carry, you will then open the door and let me into the laboratory. you will then lock the door again, take the key from the lock, and hurry back to the antechamber. you will observe the most profound silence in regard to what has occurred; and, if life and your eternal welfare are dear to you, you will betray having seen me by neither word, look, nor gesture." "exalted master," whispered jean, "i am nothing more than your slave and creature, and i know that my life is but dust in your hands. i fear the invisible, and i adore you in your sublimity. graciously permit me to embrace your feet, that the touch may impart to me eternal health and strength." and he knelt down and kissed the feet of the veiled figure with impassioned tenderness. the veiled figure bowed down to him and said: "grace will be shed upon you; you are a good and obedient servant. at the next assembly you will learn that you have been elevated a degree, and have come a step nearer to the inner halls of the temple. be silent, no word of thanks, but arise and conduct me!" jean arose and stepped forward, the veiled figure following him, and conducted him, as he had been directed, to the laboratory; he let him in, closed and locked the door again, and returned hastily to the antechamber. had this all really happened, or had jean only been dreaming? he asked himself this question, and looked inquiringly and anxiously around in the little chamber. he was entirely alone; the secret door was closed. no one was with him, all was still around him, and profound silence seemed to reign in the dining-room also. jean stepped softly to the door and listened. he could now hear a subdued murmur, and could even distinguish the voices of his mistress and the privy-chamberlain. they seemed to be conversing eagerly; but they spoke in such low tones that it was impossible for jean to understand a single word. and they were really engaged in a very earnest conversation; in a conversation which absorbed wilhelmine's attention wholly. rietz had not only related his interview with the maid of honor, but had also given her a faithful account of the king's visit to schönhausen, and of the conversation between charles von voss and his sister, in which he persuaded her to receive the king. "how do you know this?" asked wilhelmine, with a shrug of her shoulders. "i imagine it could have needed no persuasion, that this young lady would have done so willingly enough." "there you are in error, my beautiful countess; i know better, because i listened to the whole conversation between the maid of honor and her brother." "how? you were present?" "not exactly present, but i heard it, nevertheless. the doors of the dilapidated old castle in schönhausen are full of cracks and crannies, and if you get near enough you can see and hear very readily." "and you were near the door of the maid of honor's chamber?" "so near that a sheet of paper could hardly have been slipped in between us." "and there was no one there to order the bold eavesdropper to leave?" "yes, there was a human being in the little dressing-room in which i stood, but this human being made no opposition whatever to my listening at the door, for the simple reason that i had paid well for the privilege. the young lady's chambermaid loves money, and is of a speculative disposition. she wishes to open a millinery establishment, and for that money is necessary; and she takes it whenever she can get it. i pay her in my gracious master's name for singing the king's praise in her mistress's ear; and i pay her in my own name for reporting to me the result of this singing, and permitting me to listen at the door when there is anything to be heard. to be sure, it cost me a considerable sum yesterday. this shrewd little kitten made me pay her twice: once for the conversation between the maid of honor and her brother, and the second time for the conversation between the king and the maid of honor." wilhelmine sprang up, and an exclamation of astonishment escaped her lips. "you have listened to the conversation between the king and the maid of honor, and now tell me of it for the first time. i conjure you, rietz, my dear rietz, my best friend, tell me of it. speak--what did the king say, and what did she reply?" "after dinner, and for nothing?" asked rietz, as he stretched himself comfortably, poured the last few drops of champagne into his glass and carried it slowly to his lips. "speak, my dear rietz. say what i shall do. what will you have?" "the little love of a house at the entrance of the park of sans-souci. it was built on speculation; that is to say, i had it built, hoping that the old king would be dead, and our frederick william seated on the throne by the time of its completion. my hope is now realized, and i ask you, my adorable wife, will you use your influence to persuade the king to give me this house as a reward for my long and faithful services?" "i will do so; i will storm the king with entreaties to give you this house." "then it is as good as mine already, and i thank my noble patroness. and now that i am paid in advance, i will impart to you the substance of that important conversation--that is, you will certainly not require me to repeat the king's protestations of love and vows of eternal fidelity." "no, i do not require that of you," sighed wilhelmine, with trembling lips; "that i can readily imagine. it can only have been a repetition of what he told me. out upon men! they are a perfidious and faithless race!" "yes, they imbibe these qualities with their mother's milk; and king frederick william also is only the son of his mother. therefore, nothing of the king's protestations of love, and the noble indignation and conflict between love and virtue on the part of the young lady. to the king's intense gratification the young lady finally admitted, with many tears and sighs, that she would love him if he were not, unfortunately, already married, and if madame rietz were not in existence. if the king were no better than a poor nobleman, the young lady would esteem it perfect bliss to become his. she would joyfully undergo hardships and suffer want at his side; but she was not willing to occupy a position that would expose her to scorn and contempt. she could not cause the noble queen additional sorrow and pain; and finally, it would be quite impossible to tolerate a despised and hated rival like wilhelmine rietz at her side. but--good heavens! what is the matter with you? you turn pale, and wail and moan fearfully! poor woman, if you are so sensitive, i must of course be silent." "it is nothing--nothing at all," murmured wilhelmine. "it was only a momentary pang, and it is now past. speak on, i am quite composed. speak! what did the king reply?" "he begged her to name the conditions on which she could consent to be his; and the beautiful and wise maid of honor stated her conditions, assuring him that they were irrevocable--her ultimatum, as the diplomatists say. and truly these conditions were ridiculous. i almost burst out laughing when i heard them." "and what were they? i pray you tell me," murmured wilhelmine, clasping her hands tightly together to keep them from trembling. "there were three conditions, and the maid of honor swore by the memory of her mother, who had died of grief caused by her love for the king's father, prince august william, that she would neither see his majesty nor speak with him until he had promised to fulfil her conditions; and, that if he could or would not fulfil them, the young lady would leave the court forever, and retire into the deepest seclusion." "she is cunning; oh, she is very cunning," murmured wilhelmine, clasping her hands yet more firmly together. "and her three conditions?" "are as follows: firstly, the young lady exacts of the king that she be married formally and rightfully to his left hand, by a protestant minister; secondly, she demands that, above all things, the consent of the queen, the wife of the right hand, be first obtained; and thirdly, and finally, she demands that wilhelmine rietz, together with her two children, be banished, and that an estate be given her in lithuania, and she be compelled to remain there and never return to berlin or potsdam." "and the king?" cried wilhelmine, in piercing accents. "the king stipulated for four weeks' time in which to consider the matter, kissed the proud lady's hand, and retired. now, my queen, you know all, and it is also time for me to retire. i must ride to potsdam at the king's command, and confer with the queen as to the conditions on which she would give her consent to this absurd marriage. but i cannot comprehend you, my beauty! you look as mournful as if you were on the point of starting for lithuania already, and as if it were another than you who sways the king's heart and soul. i, for my part, place implicit confidence in your power, and am satisfied that the king will never give you up or desert you. would i otherwise have courted your alliance? would i have based my hopes of obtaining the little house at sans-souci on your intercession? no, my beauty; you are, and will remain, queen, in spite of all the wives of the right and the left hand. only you must not be discouraged, and must not look so sad. for you well know that our good master cannot abide mournful faces, and invariably runs away from weeping women." "it is true; you are right," said wilhelmine. "i will wreathe my face in smiles. i will laugh." and she burst out into a loud and vibrating peal of laughter, in which rietz heartily joined. "that is right," he cried; "now i admire you! you look like a lioness defending her young. that is right, my beauty! 'he who trusts in god, and strikes out boldly around him, will never come to grief,' my good old burgomaster herr funk used to say. strike boldly, my queen, deal out heavy blows, and we shall never come to grief, and all will yet be well. and now, my charming wife, i must take leave of you, as i hear a carriage driving up that i wager brings no other than his majesty. it is not necessary that he should still find me here. i will, therefore, slip out of the back door and beat a retreat through the garden. addio, carissima, addio!" he bowed respectfully, threw her a kiss with the tips of his fingers, opened a window, and sprang out upon the terrace, from which a small stairway led down into the garden. wilhelmine frowned, and cast an angry look in the direction he had taken. "how degraded a soul! how base a character!" she murmured; "but yet i must cling to him, and be very friendly with him. he is my only support, my only friend; for without him i would be lost! and i will not be lost! i will maintain my position; while i live, i will bravely battle for it!" "the king!" cried jean, throwing the door open. "his majesty has arrived, and awaits my lady in her parlor." "i am coming," said wilhelmine, calmly. "hurry down into the park, and tell my son and daughter that their father is here. they are down on the river; they must come at once to greet his majesty." chapter viii. new love. the king advanced to meet wilhelmine with a gentle smile; and when, after a formal obeisance, she congratulated him in cold and ceremonious terms, frederick william burst out into laughter, caught her in his arms, and pressed a kiss on her brow. wilhelmine trembled, and tears rushed to her eyes. she felt like clasping him in her arms and conjuring him, with tender reproaches and passionate words of love, not to abandon her, and not to drive herself and his children out into the cold world. but she repressed her emotion--she knew the king could not endure sad faces, and always fled from a woman in tears. she had the courage to smile, and seem to be gay; and her countenance bore no trace of disquiet or anxiety. she conversed with perfect composure and indifference, as if no change had taken or ever could take place in their relations to each other. frederick william's joyousness had at first been assumed, to hide his embarrassment; and he felt greatly relieved by wilhelmine's manner. he abandoned himself wholly to the charming society of the beautiful and agreeable friend, who had always so well understood how to enliven him and banish all care from his breast. and when the two children entered the parlor, and his favorite alexander, a boy of ten years of age, ran forward, looked wonderingly at his papa king, and then threw his arms tenderly around his neck, and kissed and hugged him, regardless of his royalty; when the lovely daughter, in the bloom of sixteen summers, the charming image of her young mother, walked forward, and seated herself on one of his knees opposite her brother, who sat on the other; and when the still beautiful mother stepped up to this group, her eyes beaming and her face wreathed in smiles, and clasped father and children in one embrace, a feeling of infinite comfort filled frederick william's breast, and tears rushed to his eyes. he gently pushed the two children from his knees, and arose. "go down into the garden, my pets, and wait for me in the rose-pavilion, when we will watch the sun set. but now go, as i have something to say to your mother." "but nothing unpleasant, i hope, papa?" said alexander, anxiously. "you have nothing to say to my mamma that will make her sad?" "and if i had," asked frederick william, smiling, "what would you do to prevent it?" "if you had," replied the boy, with a bold and defiant expression, "i know very well what i would do. i would not go away. i would remain here, even if my papa ordered me to go. but for this once i could not be obedient, although i should be scolded for it." "and what effect would your remaining here have, alexander?" asked the king. "it would have this effect, your majesty," replied the boy, gravely. "my dear mamma would then hear nothing that would make her feel sad, or perhaps even make her cry." "but if i should tell her something in your presence that would make her feel sad?" "that you will not do, papa!" cried alexander, erecting himself proudly. "no, while i am here you will certainly not make my mamma sad; for you know that i would cry too, if my mamma cried, and you certainly could not bear to see your poor little son and his mamma weeping bitterly." "you love your mamma very much, i suppose?" "yes," exclaimed the boy, throwing his arms around his mother's neck, and laying his curly head on her bosom; "yes, i love my mamma very dearly; and my heart almost breaks when i see her cry. and she cries very often now, and--" "go, alexander," said his mother, interrupting him. "you see your sister is an obedient daughter, and has already obeyed her father's command. follow her now, my son; learn from your sister to obey your father without murmuring." "yes, my son, follow your sister," said the king, gently. "fear nothing, my boy, i have no intention of making your mother feel sad." "then i will go, papa," cried alexander, as he pressed his father's hand tenderly to his lips. he then skipped joyfully out of the room. the king followed the handsome boy, with an affectionate look, until the door closed behind him. he then turned to wilhelmine, who met his gaze with a gentle smile. "wilhelmine, i have entered on a new life to-day. the poor prince royal, who was harassed with debt, has become a rich and mighty king. a young king's first and most sacred duty is to prove his gratitude to those who were his loving and faithful friends, while he was yet prince royal. and therefore, wilhelmine, you were my first thought; therefore am i come to you to prove that i have a grateful heart, and can never forget the past. you have undergone hardships, and suffered want for me; the hour of reward has now come. impart to me all your wishes freely, and without reservation, and i swear to you that they shall be fulfilled. will you have a name, a proud title? will you have jewelry or treasures? will you have a magnificent landed estate? speak out, tell me what you desire, for i have come to reward you, and i am king." she looked at him proudly, with sparkling eyes. "you have come to reward me," said she, "and you are king. what care i for your royalty! the king has not the power to grant my wishes!" "what is it, then, that you wish?" he asked, in embarrassment. "i wish what the king cannot, what only the man can grant. i wish you to love me as dearly as the prince royal loved me. i crave no riches and no treasures, no titles and no estates. when we swore that we would love and be true to each other until death, you did not dare to think that you would some day reward me for my love. when we exchanged our vows of love and fidelity, written with our blood, this was the marriage contract of our hearts, and this contract consisted of but one paragraph. it only secured to each of us the love and fidelity of the other as a dower. let me retain this dower, frederick william; keep your treasures, titles, and estates, for your favorites and flatterers. such things are good enough for them, but not for me--not for the mother of your children! leave me in possession of my dower of your love and fidelity!" frederick lowered his eyes in confusion, and did not seem to see her stretch out her arms imploringly. he turned away and walked slowly to and fro. wilhelmine's arms sank down, and a deep sigh escaped her lips. "the decisive hour has come," said she to herself. "it shall find me armed and prepared for the struggle!" suddenly the king stopped in front of her, and a ray of determination beamed in his genial, handsome countenance. "wilhelmine," said he, "i stand on the threshold of a great and sublime future. i will not act a lie at such a time. between us there must be perfect and entire truth. are you ready to hear it?" "i am ready," said she, gravely. "truth and death are preferable to life and falsehood." "come, wilhelmine," continued the king, extending his hand. "let us seat ourselves on the sofa, where we have so often conversed in earnestness and sincerity. let us converse in the same spirit to-day, and open our hearts to each other in honest sincerity." he conducted her to the sofa, and seated himself at her side. she laid her head on his shoulder, and subdued sobs escaped her breast. "do not speak yet," she whispered. "let me rest a moment, and think of the beautiful past, now that your future looks so bright. i have not the courage to look at the future. it seems to me that i am like those unhappy beings, of whom dante narrates, that they walk onward with their faces turned backward, and that they cannot see what is coming, but only that which has been and which lies behind them. ah, like them i see only what has been. i see us two, young, happy, and joyous, for the star of our youthful love shone over us. i see you at my side as my teacher, instructing me, and endeavoring to cultivate my mind.--frederick, do you remember the italian lessons you gave me? with you i read dante, you explained to me this awful picture of the reversed faces. shall i now experience through you the dreadful reality of what you then explained in the poem? shall i shudder at the aspect of the future, and only live on that which is past and gone? tell me, frederick, can it be true, can it be possible? does love, with all its happiness and bliss, then really lie only behind us, and no longer before us? but no, no, do say so!" she cried, imploringly, as she saw that he was about to speak; "let us be still and dream on for a moment, as we are now on the threshold of a new era, as you say." she ceased speaking, and buried her head in frederick william's bosom. he laid his hand on her neck and pressed her to his heart. a long pause ensued. a last ray of the setting sun shone in through the window, and illumined with its golden light the head of the poor woman who clung trembling to her lover's bosom. the last ray of the setting sun! the spirits of the past danced and trembled in its luminous course; the days which had been, sparkled and glittered in its last ray, and then expired. "ah," sighed the king, after an interval of silence, "why is the human heart so weak? why does it not retain like the precious stone its brilliant tints and fiery lustre? why do the rainbow hues and fire of love vanish? why has fate ordained that all things should be subject to change, even love?" wilhelmine raised her head--the hour of bitterness was past; she now had courage to face the future, to pass the threshold of the new era. what has the future in store for her? will it be gloomy? has the sun set for her whole life, as its last ray has set in the chamber where she now sits, in night and darkness, at the side of the man she once called the sun of her life? "you no longer love me, frederick william!" "i do love you, wilhelmine; certainly i do, right cordially and sincerely." she uttered a loud cry and pressed her hand to her heart. how different was this tame assurance of love to the passionate protestations of former days! "speak on, frederick william, speak on! i am prepared to hear all! you love me right cordially and sincerely, you say?" "yes, wilhelmine, and god is my witness that this is the truth. i desire to do everything to contribute to your happiness?" "everything! everything, but love me as heretofore!" "ah, wilhelmine, man is but man after all, and no god! nothing in his nature is eternal and imperishable, not even love; not that ardent, passionate love which is only crowned by the possession of the loved and adored object. but possession it is, this longed-for possession, that kills love. we are only charmed with that for which we long; when once attained we become accustomed to it, and custom begets indifference. it is heart-rending that it should be so, but it is so! we cannot change human nature, and human we all are!" "words, words," she murmured. "why not say it all at once. you do not love me? you love another? answer these two questions; i conjure you, answer them!" "i will, wilhelmine. i no longer love you, you say. it is true, i no longer love you as i once loved you, but perhaps more, perhaps better, more purely! i no longer love you, but i entertain for you the dearest and most enduring friendship. love is like the sun: it shines brightly in the morning, but sets when evening comes. friendship is like the evening star, ever present, and only obscured at times by the greater brilliancy of the sun. wilhelmine our sun has at last set after gladdening us with its rays for many long years. and you cannot justly complain of its departure; it was necessary that night should ultimately come. but the evening-star still shines in the heavens, and will ever shine there! i pray you, wilhelmine, be no weak, no ordinary woman! do not make useless complaints, but look at matters as they are. be strong, and overcome the petty vanity of the woman who feels herself insulted when her lover's passion cools. i do not love you; and, as i am a man, and as the human heart is always susceptible to a new love, i am also ready to make this admission: i love another! be composed, do not interrupt me with reproaches. this is unalterable, and we must have the courage to look the truth in the face! yes, i love another, and love her as ardently as i once loved you, but--i now no longer believe in an eternity of passion; i know that it will decline, and i therefore no longer tell my new love as i once told you. i will love you as long as i live; but i only say, i will love you as long as my heart will permit! i know that a day will come when i will also weary of this love; but never, never will the day come, wilhelmine, when the friendship i feel for you could grow cold, when i could become indifferent to her i once so passionately loved, and to whom i owe the happiest years of my life! some day my heart will be callous to all love and all women, but it will ever beat warmly for you; the days of my youth will be reflected from your brow, and the recollections of happy years will bind me more firmly to you, than all the vows of love could bind me to other women. be as strong, brave, and wise, as you have always been; forgive me this human weakness. renounce my love, and accept my friendship--my true, lasting, and imperishable friendship." "friendship!" she repeated, with mocking laughter. "the word has a freezing sound. you promised me glowing wine, and now you offer to quench the thirst of my heart with cold water." "of wine we grow weary, wilhelmine. heavenly intoxication is followed by highly terrestrial headache; but pure water refreshes and revives without intoxicating; it gives health and tranquillizes the heart." "or turns it to ice," rejoined wilhelmine. "not so, it gives new warmth! and thus it is with friendship also, wilhelmine." "and all this means," said she, sobbing, "that you intend to drive me from your side, to banish me? i am to be compelled to yield to a rival?" "no, that you shall not do!" he cried with vivacity. "no, you are only to consent to be my friend, to elevate yourself above all petty jealousy, and to wisely and discreetly adapt yourself to the unavoidable. if you should not be able to do this, wilhelmine, if you should attempt to play the _rôle_ of the jealous orsina, instead of that of the discreet friend, then only would i, to my own great sorrow, be compelled to separate from you, to renounce the pleasure of associating with my dear friend, and--" "no," she cried in dismay, as she threw her arms around him; "no, i cannot live without you, i will not go into exile with my poor, dear children!" "with your children!" repeated the king. "who thinks of sending these children into exile?" "do you not consider it possible that you will send me into exile? and where i am, there my children will also be, of course!" "where you are, wilhelmine, there your daughter will be; that is lawful and natural. but the son belongs to the father; and, whatever may divide and separate us, my son alexander shall not leave me; my bright, handsome boy, remains with his father." it had grown dark, and he could not see the light of the bold resolution wilhelmine had formed, sparkling in her eyes. she laid her hand on frederick william's shoulder. "we are standing on the threshold of a new era," said she, "my son shall now decide between you and me. i lay my fate in his hands, and will accept it as if it came from god. we will have him called, and he shall choose between his father and his mother. if he decides to leave me and remain with you, i will bow my head in humility, and will remain, and content myself with your friendship. i will stand in darkness, and view from afar my happy rival sunning herself in your love. but if my son should decide to go with his mother, then, like hagar, i will wander forth into the desert. but i will not complain, and will not feel unhappy; i will have at my side, my son, the image of his father; the son in whom i love the father!" "so let it be," cried the king. "our son shall decide. go, and bring him in." "no, i will only see him in your presence; you might otherwise suppose i had influenced his decision. permit me to have him called." she rang the bell, and ordered the servant to bring lights, and request his young master to come at once to his majesty's presence. "we will soon learn the decision of fate," said wilhelmine, when the servant had closed the door. "for fate will speak to me through the mouth of my son!" chapter ix. the decision. a few minutes had hardly elapsed before the door of the parlor was opened, and wilhelmine's son entered. with flushed cheeks and a displeased expression on his handsome face, the boy walked up to the king, who was gazing at him tenderly. "my gracious father," said he, "you promised to join us in the rose-pavilion, down at the river side; and we waited and waited, but all in vain! the sunset was splendid; it was a beautiful sight to see the sun fall into the water all at once; but you would not come to tell the dear sun 'good-night.' why not? i think a king should always keep his word, and you certainly promised to come!" "well, my severe young gentleman," said the king, smiling, "i beg your pardon. but i had to speak with your mother on matters of importance, and you must have the goodness to excuse me." the boy turned and looked inquiringly at the face of his mother. "was it necessary, mamma?" the king burst into laughter. "really," he cried, "you are a grand inquisitor, my little alexander. i am almost afraid of you. but you have not yet answered his severity, mamma. excuse me to this young gentleman by assuring him that we had matters of the gravest importance to discuss." "alexander knows that what the king says and does is above all blame," replied wilhelmine, gravely; "and i beg that he may be excused for losing sight of the king and thinking only of the indulgent father. but now hear why your father sent for you, my son; and answer his questions as your little head and heart shall prompt." "shall i state the question?" asked the king, in some embarrassment. "i had rather you did it, wilhelmine. however," he continued, as she shook her head in dissent, "it shall be as you desire. listen, my little alexander. your mother thinks of going on a journey, and of leaving here for a few years. i intend to give your mother several estates in prussia as a remembrance of this day, and she may conclude to make them her home for some years. although such a life may be pleasant for ladies, it is very quiet and lonely, and not at all suitable for a young man who still has a great deal to learn, and who is ambitious of becoming a soldier, which he could not well accomplish in the country. i therefore, very naturally, desire that you should separate yourself from your mother for a few years, and remain with me, your father, who certainly loves you as much as she does. but we have determined to leave the decision to you, although you are still so young, and i now ask you, my son, will you go with your mother, or will you remain with your father? do not reply at once, my child, but take time for consideration." "oh, my dear papa," said the boy, quickly, "there is nothing to consider, i know at once what i ought to do. my dear mamma has always remained with me, she has never deserted me. and when i had the measles, a short time ago, she sat at my bedside, day and night, and played with me, and told me such beautiful stories. and i would never have got well if my mamma had not nursed me. whenever she left my bed, if only for a few minutes, i grew worse and suffered much more, and when she returned i always felt relieved at once. and how could i now desert the dear mamma, who never deserted me?" "oh, my child, my darling child," cried wilhelmine, her eyes filling with tears, "god bless you for these words! but yet this shall not be a decision. you must take some time for consideration, my son. i am going to live on my estates, as your father told you. it will be very quiet and lonely in the country; there will be no soldiers, no beautiful houses, no amusements, and no boys to play with. but if you remain here with your father, you will have all this, and be honored and respected as a prince. you will live with your tutor, in a splendid house, in the beautiful city of berlin, you will take delightful rides and drives, and see the soldier's drill every day. your father will give you all you desire." "then let him give me my mamma," cried the boy eagerly. "yes, my papa, if i can live with my dear mamma in a fine house in berlin, and if you will come right often to see us, i will have all i desire." "but your mother will not remain in berlin, alexander, and, therefore, you must decide whether you will go with her, or stay here with your father." "well, then," said alexander, gravely, "if i must choose between you, i will go with mamma, of course. to be sure, i am very sorry to leave my papa, but i cannot live without my mamma; she is so good to me and loves me so dearly, i am always afraid when she is not with me." speechless with emotion, wilhelmine sank on her knees, her countenance radiant with delight, and extended her arms toward her son, who threw himself on her breast with a loving cry. the king turned away, his heart filled with unutterable sadness. he covered his eyes with his hands, and stood in the middle of the chamber, isolated and deserted in his grief, while he could hear the kisses, sobs, and whispered words of tenderness of the mother and her son. suddenly he felt a light touch on his shoulder and heard a mournful, trembling voice murmur his name. the king withdrew his hands from his countenance, and his eyes met wilhelmine's. she stood before the king, her right hand resting on the boy's shoulder, who had thrown his arm around her waist and nestled closely to her side. "farewell, frederick william!" said she in a loud and solemn voice. "hagar is going forth into the desert of life! the estates and treasures which you offer me, i reject; my children must not suffer want, however, and the little that has heretofore been mine, i will retain. as soon as i find a place where i wish to remain, you will be informed of it, and i desire that the furniture of this house be sent to me there. the house shall be sold, and the proceeds will constitute my fortune and the inheritance of my children. i leave here with my children to-night. my thoughts and blessings will, however, remain with the father of my children. farewell, your majesty, and may your happiness be complete! farewell!" she bowed her head in a last greeting, and then turned and walked slowly through the room, supported by her son. the king looked after her in breathless suspense; with every step she took his anxiety increased. and when she opened the door, and mother and son were about to pass the threshold, without even once turning to look at him, whose eyes were filled with tears, and who was regarding them with such fondness and such agony, he uttered a cry of dismay, rushed after them, seized wilhelmine's arm, and thrust her back into the room with such violence that she fell helplessly to the floor, and her son burst into tears. his sobs seemed to arouse wilhelmine from her insensibility. she arose, and turned with proud composure to the king, who stood before her almost breathless with passion. "send him out of the room," she murmured. "he should not see your majesty in this condition." the king made no reply, but took the boy by the hand, kissed him tenderly, and then led him to the door, and locked it behind him. he then returned to wilhelmine, who awaited him with pallid cheeks, although her manner was perfectly composed. "wilhelmine," said he, uttering each word with difficulty, "wilhelmine, it is not possible. you cannot leave me. if you go, my youth, my happiness, my good star go with you! have pity on me! see how i suffer! be great, be good, be merciful! stay with me!" "thou hearest him, o god," cried wilhelmine, raising her arms toward heaven. "thou hearest him, and thou seest what i suffer! i have loved him from my youth. i have been true to him in every thought, with every breath of life. i have borne for his sake shame and disgrace, and the contempt of the world. i have bestowed upon him all the treasures of my soul and heart; and yet my sacrifices have not been great enough, i have not yet been sufficiently humiliated. he demands of the mother of his children a still greater sacrifice: that i renounce his love, and stand by and see him give to another the love he swore should be mine! o thou great, thou almighty god, have pity on me! send down a flash of lightning to kill and save me! i cannot live without him, and i may not live with him." "wilhelmine," said the king, in a hollow voice, "you will not make this sacrifice? you will not remain with me as my best and dearest friend--the friend to whom i will give my whole confidence, who shall share my thoughts as my sister soul, and from whom i will conceal no secrets?" she slowly shook her head. what did cleopatra determine to do, rather than grace the triumph of her faithless lover and her hated rival, and pass under the yoke? she determined to die; she let loose the serpent which had been gnawing at her heart, that it might take her life. "i prefer to die like cleopatra, rather than live like the marquise de pompadour." "well, then," said frederick william, his voice trembling with emotion, and looking tenderly at wilhelmine, "i will prove to you that the friendship i entertain for you is stronger than the love i have given to another. i sacrifice to you, the beloved of my youth and the friend of my soul, all the wishes and hopes of my heart. i will renounce my love for the maid of honor, julie von voss, and will see her no more. she shall leave the court, and i will never seek to recall her. are you now contented, wilhelmine? will you remain with me, and not deprive me of my dear son, who was about to leave me on your account? wilhelmine, will you try to forget, and--" the king's voice faltered, and tears rushed to his eyes, but with an effort he steadied his voice and continued: "and will you sincerely endeavor to compensate me for what i sacrifice?" with a cry of joy, wilhelmine threw her arms around the king's neck, and pressed a long and fervent kiss on his quivering lips. "i thank you, frederick william, i thank you! you promised me when you came that you would to-day reward me for my love and fidelity during the long years which have been. you have kept your promise, my beloved; you have rewarded me. you have made the greatest sacrifice one human being can make for another. you have sacrificed the passion of your heart, and are ready to keep the faith which you sealed with your blood. see here, frederick william, see this scar on my hand! this wound i gave myself, in order that i might write for you in my own blood my vow of love and fidelity. you kissed the wound and drank of my blood, swearing that you would always love, and never desert me. you have kept your oath, frederick william. you have conquered yourself; you have now sealed your faith with the greatest human sacrifice." the king suppressed the sigh which trembled on his lips, and pressed wilhelmine's head to his bosom. "now you will remain, wilhelmine? now you will not go?" she raised her head quickly, and looked at him with beaming eyes. "i will remain with you, frederick william; i will remain. and, stronger in my love than cleopatra was, i will pass under the yoke, and march quietly in the triumphal procession of my rival. sacrifice for sacrifice! you were ready to sacrifice your passion, i will sacrifice to you my woman's pride and vanity! i, the discarded woman, will walk without murmuring behind your new love and be her trainbearer. go, frederick william, and woo this beautiful young lady; wed her, if your priests will permit; be happy with her, and love her as long as you can, and then return to your friend, who can never cease to love you--whose affection for you is the breath of her life." "oh, wilhelmine, my dear, my generous wilhelmine," cried the king, pressing her to his heart, "i can never forget this noble-hearted generosity; i can never cease to be grateful! i have told you already, and i now repeat it: the human heart is inconstant, and every love must at last die; but friendship lives forever. no earthly desires dim the pure flame of its holy affection. oh, wilhelmine, i will never desert you; never shall your enemies and rivals succeed in estranging my heart from you, my friend." "swear that they shall not!" cried wilhelmine, raising her right hand. "lay your fingers on this scar on my hand, and swear that you will be my dear friend throughout my whole life, that nothing shall separate us, and that nothing shall induce you to drive me from your side, but that i shall live where you live, and ever be your friend, your confidante, and your sister soul." the king laid the fingers of his right hand on the scar, repeated the words she had spoken, and swore that he would be her true and devoted friend until death, that he would never drive her from his side, but that she should live where he lived, and remain with him as his friend and confidante for all time.[25] "and now that we have come to an understanding," said he with a joyous smile, "i may perhaps be permitted to reward my dear friend, and shed a ray of my newly-acquired royalty on this humble dwelling! you said some time ago that you desired to sell this house and live on the proceeds of its sale. i approve of your plan. i will purchase this house of you for five hundred thousand dollars. you will endeavor to live on the interest of this sum; if there should be a hitch now and then, and debts should arise, you need only inform me of the fact and they shall be paid." "oh, my dear, my generous friend," cried wilhelmine, "how can i thank you, how--" "be still," said the king, interrupting her, "i have not yet quite finished. the house is now mine; and the price agreed upon shall be paid you to-morrow out of the royal fund. as i can do what i please with my own property, i intend to make a present of it to the mother of the count and countess von der mark. and it will be my first care to have it enlarged and elegantly furnished, in order that it may be a suitable dwelling for the count and countess von der mark, and particularly for their noble and beautiful mother!" "the count and countess von der mark?" repeated wilhelmine with astonishment. "who are they? who is their mother? i never heard of them!" "you shall soon become acquainted with them, only wait," said the king smiling; and he went to the door, unlocked it, and gave the bell-rope which hung beside it a violent pull. "where are the children?" asked the king, of the servant who rushed forward to answer his summons. "your majesty, my young master and mistress are in the dining-room." "send them to me immediately," said the king; and he remained standing at the door awaiting them. when they came running into the parlor with anxious, inquiring looks, the king took them by the hand and conducted them to their mother. "madame," said he, gravely, "i have the honor to introduce to you countess mariane and count alexander von der mark." "count alexander von der mark?" repeated the boy, looking up wonderingly at his father. "who is that?" "that you are, my son," said the king, as he stooped down and raised the boy up in his arms. "you are the count von der mark, and your sister is the countess; and you shall have the prussian eagle in your coat of arms, and shall be honored at my court as my dear, handsome son. all the proud courtiers shall bow their heads before you and your sister. the count and countess von der mark shall have the precedence at my court over all the noble families; and their place shall immediately be behind the royal princesses." "and that will be my dear mamma's place, too?" said alexander. "she will always be where we are?" "yes," said the king hastily, "she will always remain with her dear children. yes, and (as the young count once remarked that, if he could live in a splendid house 'under the linden-trees'[26] with his mother, and if i would go to see them right often, he would have all he desired), i will make him a present of the most magnificent house 'under the linden-trees' in berlin, and the young count shall live there, and i will visit him right often in his new home." "that will be splendid," cried the boy clapping his hands. "you are delighted, too, are you not, mariane?" "certainly i am," replied his sister, smiling, "and i thank his majesty for the great honor he confers in giving us such grand titles." "i am glad to hear that you are pleased with your title, my dear daughter; but, as names and titles do not sustain life, a sufficient amount will be set apart for your use as pin-money. and when a suitable and agreeable gentleman demands your hand in marriage, you shall have a dowry of two hundred thousand dollars. when this becomes known you will certainly not fail to have a vast number of admirers from which to make your selection. no more thanks, if you please! we will now go to dinner. count von der mark, give your mother your arm, i will escort the young countess." "your majesty," announced the servant, who entered at this moment, "colonel von bischofswerder and privy-chamberlain von wöllner have just arrived, and beg to be admitted to your majesty's presence!" "true, indeed," murmured the king, "i had altogether forgotten them. madame, you will please excuse me for withdrawing from your society. i must not keep these gentlemen waiting, as i directed them to meet me here on important business. when this business is transacted i must however return to potsdam. farewell, and await me at breakfast to-morrow morning." chapter x. the invocation. "you have then really come, my friends," said the king. "you have really determined to attempt to invoke the invisible?" "god is mighty in the weak," said wöllner, folding his hands piously; "and we men are merely the vessels into which he pours his anger and his love, and in which he makes himself manifest. by fasting and prayer i have made myself worthy to commune with spirits." "the longing after the invisible fathers throbs in my heart and brain; and, if in the heat of this longing i invoke them, they will lend an ear to my entreaties, and approach to answer the questions of your majesty, their best-beloved son." "nor have i a doubt on the subject," said bischofswerder, complacently. "i will entreat the spirit of the grand-kophta with the whole strength of my soul, and with all the means which the holy secret sciences place at my disposal. the hour has come in which will be determined whether the immortal spirit controls the mortal body, compelling it to obey its behests in spite of time and space." "then you really consider it possible, my friend? you are yet of the opinion that the grand-kophta will appear in answer to your invocations?" "yes, sire, i am of that opinion!" "that is to say, his spirit will come amongst us in some intangible shape. you cannot be in earnest when you assert that he will answer your call in the body, as i have already told you that the grand-kophta is in london. our ambassador not only saw him there, but spoke with him the very day he dispatched the courier, who arrived here yesterday." "your majesty, the secret sciences teach me that the spirit controls the body; and we will now test the truth of this lesson. if the grand-kophta does not appear in flesh and blood, and give to your majesty, with his own hand, the elixir of life for which your soul thirsts, science lies, and the sublime spirits consider me unworthy of their confidence! in that event, i will renounce my right to enter the inner temple; it will be evident that i am not one of the enlightened. i will bow submissively to the anger and contempt of the invisible, and return voluntarily to the outer temple to begin my apprenticeship anew." the king shook his head thoughtfully. "your faith is heroic; and i only hope you are not doomed to be disappointed. and now, let us begin our work!" "his majesty's will be done," replied the two rosicrucians, respectfully. "will your majesty permit us to go to the laboratory in order to make our preparations?" "i will accompany you, and render assistance as an inferior brother. you know that no one besides us three is permitted to enter this laboratory; and i therefore keep the key in a secret drawer of my writing-desk, which i alone can open!" "permit us to withdraw, in order that we may not see from what place your majesty takes the key." the two rosicrucians walked toward the door, and turned their faces so that they could not see what was done behind them. "i have the key," said the king, after a short interval. "come, my brothers. i am now ready!" he walked rapidly to the door, unlocked it, and entered the laboratory, followed by bischofswerder and wöllner. but hardly had the king stepped into the room before he uttered a cry of terror, and staggered back, pale with fright. "the invisibles! the invisibles!" he murmured. "see! see! they knew we were coming, and have made all the preparations!" "all hail, the invisible fathers," cried wöllner, with enthusiasm. "they have prepared the altar." "the invisibles are awaiting us; they approve of our purpose," shouted bischofswerder, exultingly. "oh, behold, my king! oh, see, my brother!" he drew the king eagerly to the large furnace which occupied one entire side of the laboratory; and it really looked as if invisible hands had been at work in this chamber. a bright fire was burning in the furnace, jets of flame darted forth through the openings, and licked the pans and retorts in which liquids and mixtures of various colors boiled and simmered. "all is prepared," said bischofswerder, who had been examining the retorts closely. "it seems the invisibles are concocting a secret mixture. but my eyes are blinded, and my brain is still in darkness; these substances and elixirs are unknown to me; i only feel that their fragrance fills me with wondrous delight. oh, come, your majesty, and inhale this blessed aroma--this atmosphere of invisible worlds!" the king timidly stepped up close to the furnace, and inclined his head over the retort pointed out by bischofswerder. dense vapors arose from the bubbling mass and enveloped the king's head. "it is true," said the king, inhaling deep draughts of the vapor. "it creates a wondrous sensation of delight and ecstasy!" "it is the fragrance of the spirit-world," said wöllner, impressively.--"oh, i feel, i know that my prayers have been heard. they are coming! lo, the invisibles are approaching! look, my king, look up there!" the king turned eagerly to wöllner, whose right arm was raised, and pointed to the opposite wall. "see, see these heavenly forms waving their hands and greeting us!" "i see nothing," murmured the king, sadly. "the visions which bless the eye of the anointed are invisible to me. i see nothing!" no, the king saw nothing! to him the chamber was empty. he saw no spirits, nor did he see bischofswerder throw a handful of white powder into the large retort at this moment. but he saw the white clouds which now ascended from the furnace; he saw the flames which burst forth from the retorts, and, in the explosions and detonations which ensued, he heard the roar of invisible musketry. "the invisibles are contending fiercely," exclaimed wöllner. "the good and bad spirits are warring with each other, and struggling for the possession of our noble king. the holy ones and the rosicrucians are battling with the freethinkers and scoffers, and the so-called enlightened. give the former the victory, almighty god! incline thyself to the believers and rosicrucians, and deal out destruction to the unbelievers and scoffers! on my knees i entreat thee, thou ruler of all things! have pity on the king, have pity on us, and--" a loud and fearful detonation--a whistling, howling roar--drowned his voice. dense white clouds, through which tongues of flame darted in every direction, ascended from the furnace and gradually filled the room. the king had staggered back, and would have fallen to the ground, but for bischofswerder, who had supported him and conducted him to an arm-chair, into which he sank back helplessly. his eyes closed, and for a few moments he was in an unconscious condition. suddenly the king's name resounded in his ear and aroused him from this trance. "awake, frederick william, awake! ours is the victory! the holy cross of love and of roses is victorious! the evil spirits have flown! awake, frederick william, awake! the invisibles are ready to answer your questions!" the king opened his eyes and looked around. he saw nothing at first but the clouds which encircled him. but suddenly a face seemed to arise in their midst--a face of deathly pallor? long brown hair fell down on either side of the broad, but low forehead. its widely-opened glassy eyes seemed to stare at the king, who shuddered, and would have turned away had not some invisible power compelled him to continue gazing at this death-like countenance. by degrees the vision grew more distinct, and stood out from the surrounding vapor in bolder relief. the neck and shoulders now appeared, and gradually the entire body of a man of a powerful build was disclosed. he wore a tightly-fitting jerkin of leather; his neck was encircled with a broad, double lace collar. a golden star glittered on his breast, and a richly-embroidered velvet mantle, bordered with ermine, hung down over his broad shoulders. this mighty, princely figure stood immovable in the midst of the white clouds, which enveloped it like a winding-sheet. but its large, proud eyes seemed fixed on frederick william with a cold, hard look. the king shuddered, and uttered low entreaties for mercy. "fear nothing, frederick william," said the vision, which spoke without opening its lips. these tones struck on the king's ear like a voice from the grave. "fear nothing, frederick william; i have not come to alarm, but to console you. the invisibles have sent me to soothe your heart, and give peace and consolation to your soul. do you not know who i am, frederick william?" "no," replied the king, in a low voice, "i do not." "i am philip of hesse," rejoined the closed lips. "philip of hesse, called, by foolish and short-sighted men, 'the magnanimous.'" "ah, now i know who you are, my prince," cried the king. "you, it was, who overthrew the rebellious peasants in battle, who overcame franz von sickingen, and introduced the reformation into germany. you were the prince who submitted to the emperor charles the fifth, after the unfortunate battle of mühlberg; were taken prisoner by him, and held in captivity until released by the treaty of passau. tell me, sublime spirit, are you not the spirit of that noble prince, of philip the magnanimous?" "i am! my whole life was a struggle, and i had many enemies to contend with. but my most formidable enemy was my own heart. this enemy was love, passionate love. wedded since my sixteenth year with christina of saxony, selected as my wife for state reasons; my heart became inflamed with love for the beautiful margaret von saale, and my one great desire was to win her and call her my wife. but her virtue withstood my entreaties; and, although she loved me, she was nevertheless determined to fly from me unless our union could be consummated by the blessing of a priest. it was in vain that i besought her to become mine. these were days of agony, and this struggle was harder than any i had maintained on the field of battle. i then suffered and wept as though i were a puling boy, and not a warrior and prince." "you are recounting the history of my own sufferings," murmured the king, in a low voice. "you are describing my own struggles!" "i know it," replied the apparition. "my eye sees your heart, and your sufferings, and therefore have i come to console you, to tell you that i have suffered as you suffer, and that your wounds shall be healed as mine were. the maiden you love is as virtuous as margaret von saale was. like margaret von saale she demands that she be made your wedded wife. in my distress and misery i addressed myself to the great reformer, whom i had patronized with pious zeal. i asked luther if the church could bless a marriage of the left hand, when a marriage of the right hand already existed; and luther, the man of justice and of truth, replied: 'it stands in the bible that the left hand shall not know what the right does; and, consequently, it is not necessary that the right hand should know what the left does. the wife of the left hand has nothing to do with the wife of the right, forced upon you for reasons of state. the former is the wife of the prince, the latter will be the wife of the man. and, as two persons are united in you, the prince and the man, these persons can contract two marriages, the one for the prince and the other for the man, and the blessing of the church is admissible for both.' but the sensitive conscience of my beautiful margaret was not yet satisfied. i now turned to philip melanchthon, the great scholar, the strictly moral and virtuous man, and demanded his opinion, telling him that the decision should rest in his hands. but philip melanchthon decided as luther had done, and proved by holy writ that such a marriage was possible and admissible. he, however, added the condition that the consent of the wife of the right hand must be obtained before the marriage of the left hand could be consummated. my generous wife gave her consent. margaret von saale became my wedded wife, and the mother of seven children, who were the joy and pride of their parents. to tell you this, i left the peaceful grave. such were the commands of the sublime spirits, who are greater than i, and who rule over the living and the dead. learn by my example how virtue can be reconciled to love. put away from you the unchaste woman with whom you live; turn your countenance from her forever--and seek and find your happiness at the side of the noble young woman to whom you shall be united by priestly blessings. farewell! my time has expired, i must go." the apparition seemed to melt away; it grew darker and fainter. for a while its dim and uncertain outlines could be seen when the clouds lifted, and then it disappeared entirely. the clouds also slowly vanished; and now they were gone, the fire could once more be seen burning brightly in the furnace. the king looked around, and observed his two friends kneeling and praying on either side of his chair. "have you been listening, my friends? did you hear the utterances of the blessed spirits?" "we have heard nothing but mutterings and shrieks, and therefore we have been entreating the sublime spirits to mitigate their anger," said wöllner, shaking his head. "but i saw a vision, a heavenly vision," cried bischofswerder. "i saw my beloved king and master, standing between two noblewomen. they both regarded him tenderly. they stood, the one on the right, the other on the left hand; on the extended right hand of both glittered a golden ring, the precious symbol of marriage. the countenance of my royal master was radiant with delight; and above him shone the star of pure and chaste love. and it seemed to me that i heard a heavenly voice cry: 'find your happiness at the side of the noble young woman to whom you will be joined by priestly blessings.'" "these were the last words of the sublime spirit that appeared to me," said the king, joyfully. "you heard them, my faithful friend, while wrestling in prayer at my side. oh, i thank you both; and while i live, i will reward your fidelity. but, alas," continued the king, with a deep-drawn sigh, "i only fear that my life will be of short duration! i feel weak and exhausted, and upon you and your influence, my friend, i depend for the life-restoring elixir." "i will procure it, you shall have it," cried bischofswerder, rising from his knees with youthful vivacity, in spite of his corpulence. "the invocation shall now begin. i will command my spirit to leave the body, and fly through time and space to the grand-kophta, to entreat him to give to the doubting, unbelieving king a visible sign of his heavenly power, to convince him that the mind rules over the body." "do not attempt it, my dear friend; do not, i solemnly conjure you," implored wöllner. "it is tempting god, to seek to set at naught the laws of nature. it is possible that your mighty spirit has power to tear itself from the body, and transport itself from place to place with the rapidity of thought; but consider the difficulty of returning, consider whether the cold, dead body can be a fitting receptacle and abode for the spirit on its return." "i know that this is the great danger to which i shall be exposed," replied bischofswerder. "but i will dare all for my king, and no danger shall terrify me when his health and happiness are at stake.--be still, my king! no thanks whatever! i love you! that suffices, that explains all! and now let me take my departure! now let me invoke the grand-kophta, the dispenser of life and health!--but listen, wöllner, listen to these last words! if the invisibles assist me, and enable my spirit to leave its earthly tenement, my body will grow cold and assume a death-like appearance. but this must not lead you to suppose that i am dead. only when this condition shall have lasted more than half an hour, i beg that you will kneel down beside my body and entreat the invisibles to command my spirit to return to its earthly abode. truly i would not wish to remain in a bodiless state, when the king needs my services. and now, my king and master, permit me to kiss your hand before i go." "no, my true, my generous friend, come to my heart!" cried the king, as he embraced bischofswerder, and pressed a kiss on his forehead. "and now, hear me, ye invisibles! lend an ear to my prayer! give wings to my spirit that it may fly through time and space!--here, wöllner! hold my body!" wöllner rushed forward in answer to this call, and caught bischofswerder in his arms as he was on the point of falling to the floor. he rested the head on his breast, covered the face with his hand, and gently stroked his cheeks and brow. the king, who stood behind him in breathless suspense, did not comprehend what was going on, and did not see the little bottle which wöllner held under his friend's nose, nor did he see him slip it adroitly into his coat-sleeve when he arose. but when wöllner stepped back, and pointed solemnly to the tranquil body, the king saw that bischofswerder's spirit had flown. he saw that the pallid, inanimate object, which lay in the chair, was nothing more than the empty tenement, once the abode of bischofswerder's spirit. of this, the widely-extended, glassy eyes, and the stiffened features, were sufficient evidence. the king shuddered, and turned away. "it is fearful to look upon the lifeless body of a friend who dies in an endeavor to save and prolong our life. how fearful, if death should be the stronger, and prevent the spirit from returning to its dwelling! not only would we mourn the loss of a friend, but his death would have been in vain, and the elixir of life unattained! we must observe the time closely and count the minutes, in order that the prayers may begin when the half-hour has elapsed." with trembling hands the king drew his richly-jewelled watch from his pocket, and watched the creeping hands in breathless anxiety. his alarm increased as time progressed, and now, when only five minutes were wanting to complete the half-hour, the king turned pale and trembled with terror. "only one minute more, then--" "he moves," whispered wöllner. "see, your majesty! oh, see! there is life in his eye, his month closes, the hue of life returns to his cheek. a miracle, a miracle has taken place! the spirit has returned to the earthly tabernacle!" bischofswerder is once more among the living; he arises. his eyes seek the king and find him. with unsteady gait, a smile on his lips, he approached the king. "sire, my spirit greets you, my heart shouts for joy. i bring you glad tidings! the grand-kophta has yielded to my entreaties. he approaches to give my king life and health, and above all things to remove his unbelief!" "he is then really coming? he approaches?" cried the king, joyfully. "call him, your majesty! call the grand-kophta, but do so with a believing and confident heart." "grand-kophta! sublimest of the sublime! lend an ear to my entreaties! appear divo cagliostro! appear, my lord and master!" a flash, a detonation, proceeding from the furnace, near which wöllner stands, and all is once more concealed by the clouds of vapor which fill the room. when they at last rise and pass away, a tall figure, enveloped in a long black mantle, is seen standing in the middle of the room. the head only is uncovered, and this head is surrounded with waving black hair, in the midst of which a precious stone shines and sparkles with the lustre of a star. and the large black eyes, which are fastened on the king's countenance, with a mild and tender look, also shine like stars. carried away with rapture and enthusiasm, the king falls on his knees, and raises his hands in adoration. but the grand-kophta advanced noiselessly to the kneeling king, begged him to rise, and helped him to do so with his own hand. "yes, you are really my sublime master," cried the enraptured king. "i feel the warm, living body, the loving pressure of the blessing-dispensing hand. hail, master! hail cagliostro!" "you appealed to me for assistance," said cagliostro, in solemn tones. "i heard the call of the noble messenger you sent me as i was about to enter the st. james's palace in london. king george of england had received another visitation from the demons who confuse his brain and darken his intellect. i was sent for and urged to come at once and drive out the demons from the head of the sick king. but it is of more importance that the healthy should not become sick, than that the sick man's condition should be somewhat improved. the spirit althotas cried out to me, saying: 'hasten to king frederick william of prussia; without your assistance he must languish and die. hasten to preserve his health and strengthen his noble soul with the breath of immortality.' at first i was uncertain of whom althotas spoke, for i had not yet heard of king frederick's death. but before my eyes there suddenly arose the vision of an old man reclining in an arm-chair. he was on the threshold of the grave; his lips quivered and his eye grew dim, and the blood refused to flow from the open vein. two weeping servants stood at his side; a greyhound lay at his feet. above him in the air i saw the demons of unbelief struggling for the soul which had just left the body; but the good angels turned away in anger. and i interpreted this vision aright; i now knew that the unbelieving king was dead, and that frederick william, the favorite of the invisible fathers, was now king of prussia. althotas then cried out, for the second time: 'hasten, frederick william needs you sorely. hasten, that he may not die. i impart to the mortal the strength of immortality!' i turned my back on st. james's palace, and immediately repaired to the holy laboratory of the spirits, to procure the necessary remedies. i then arose and flew to my suffering king on the wings of the invisible." "it is then true, it is really possible!" cried the enraptured king. "you are really the great cagliostro! you have accomplished this miracle, have compelled the body to subject itself to the will of the spirit, and fly through time and space at its command! oh, let me fall down and embrace your knees! infuse the heavenly breath of thy lips into my enfeebled body!" and he sank on his knees before the grand-kophta, and looked up to him in supplication. "arise, frederick william; favorite of the invisible, arise from your knees! i have not come to humble you, but to raise you up. the king who rules over millions of human beings, must not bend the knee to mortal man, and worship that which is visible and perishable. humble your immortal spirit before the immortal, and lift up your soul in adoration to the unseen and imperishable. be the ruler of men, and the humble subject of the invisible. arise, frederick william, and listen to what i have to say, for my time is short, and althotas awaits me on the threshold of st james's palace, in london." in obedience to this command the king arose from his knees, and stood before the magician, whose luminous eyes were still fixed intently on his countenance. "you are not ill, frederick william," said he, "nor are you well; your spirit lacks buoyancy, its wings are drooping, and your pulse is feeble. death is slowly but surely approaching, and you would languish and die, if there were no means of driving off this grim monster." "oh, have pity on me! give me the life-preserving elixir! save me! i swear that my gratitude shall be unbounded, and that i am ready to bestow any reward that the invisible fathers may demand." "they, indeed, demand no sacrifice and accept no reward, as men do. their actions are influenced by higher laws. love, honor, and obedience, are the rewards they exact." "and from the depths of my heart, i promise them love, honor, and obedience." "the invisibles know you to be an obedient servant, and therefore am i here to restore health and strength to your body. but hear me, frederick william, and lay my words to heart! in order that death may obtain no power over you, your heart must regain its joyousness, and your soul its buoyancy. a passionate love, which you are too weak to overcome, has filled your heart, and therefore its joyousness is dimmed. then, gratify this passion, frederick william! the invisibles give their consent! let your whole being be imbued with this pure, this noble love; renounce all ignoble passions and desires. make the fair maiden you love your wife, and peace, joy, and tranquillity, will once more abide in your heart, and your spirit will regain its buoyancy, and bear you aloft to the heights of enthusiasm. but your body shall also be restored to health; we will drive from it all weakness and disease. i bring you the elixir of life, of health, and of strength!" "oh, thanks, unspeakable thanks!" cried frederick william, seizing the little bottle which cagliostro held in his hand, and carrying it eagerly to his lips. "let me drink, sublime master! let me drink of this heavenly elixir at once!" "no! save this precious medicine for a time when you will need it, when i will no longer be with you. for the present i am here, and i will infuse strength and health into your body! receive these blessings, frederick william! in the name of the invisible, i anoint you king of the world and of life!" as he uttered these words, he poured a few drops of some fluid on the king's head from a bottle which he held in his hand. a delicious fragrance instantly filled the room. the king raised his head with an exclamation of delight, and inhaled, in long draughts, the fragrant atmosphere. "a wondrous sensation thrills my being; i feel so happy, so buoyant! i am leaving earth; and now i seem to see the portals of paradise!" "take this, and these portals will open to your view," said cagliostro, handing the king a little pill of some grayish substance. "eat this, and all the bliss of paradise will be yours!" the king took the pill from cagliostro's extended hand, carried it to his lips, and slowly swallowed it. instantly a tremor seized his whole body, his cheeks turned deathly pale; he tottered and sank back into the chair which wöllner had noiselessly rolled forward. cagliostro stooped down over him, and regarded the shadows which passed across and darkened the king's countenance. by degrees these shadows disappeared. his features brightened, and at last his countenance shone with joy and happiness, and was radiant with smiles. "he is in paradise," said cagliostro, stepping back from the chair. "his spirit revels in heavenly delights. an hour will elapse before he returns from paradise to this earth, and the remembrance of what he has seen and enjoyed in this hour will be a sunbeam in his existence for a long time to come. he will long for a renewal of this bliss, and you must console him with the promise, that i will either appear to him in person, or else send him, by a messenger, at the expiration of each year, one of these wonderful pills, which condenses the delights of a whole life into one hour, provided he is an humble and obedient servant, and does the will of the invisible in all things. his soul is lost in rapture, and his ear is closed to all earthly sounds!--and now, my friends, come nearer, and listen to my words." the two rosicrucians, wöllner and bischofswerder, approached, in obedience to his command; and when cagliostro laid his hands on their shoulders, their countenances beamed with delight. "speak to us, sublime master! your utterances fall on our souls like heavenly dew. speak, and command your servants to do your will!" "you must continue the course marked out for you by the fathers through me. you must aid in building up the kingdom of the church and the invisible on this earth. the invisible church, and her visible priests and representatives, shall alone rule on earth in the future, and, therefore, thrones must be overturned, crowns trodden in the dust, and the names of the kings and princes of earth uprooted like weeds and cast in the oven. an era of terror is drawing nigh when the sword and firebrand will go hand in hand through the land, and rapine and slaughter be the order of the day. the demons of insurrection and rebellion are already at work, threatening princes, and greeting the people with these words of promise: liberty and fraternity. we, the invisible, the sacred fathers of the holy church, have sent them out to carry terror to the hearts of princes. the king who has just died devoted his whole life to the enfranchisement of the spirit of the people; our chief endeavor must be to fetter this spirit, and restore the people and their rulers to their former humility and submission. they must do penance in sackcloth and ashes, and be made aware that the priests of the holy church and the pious brothers of the order, can alone save them, and reduce their rebellious subjects to obedience and submission. the knife and burning fire are sometimes necessary to heal wounds and diseases. and these remedies we will apply. the revolution can be made a mighty and sublime weapon in the hands of the invisible, and the bloodiest paths may lead to the greatest good! alas, that we should be compelled to tread such paths!" "alas! alas!" cried the two rosicrucians, pale with terror. the countenance of the slumbering king, however, still wore the same enraptured expression. "but," continued cagliostro, "of these evils, good will come. the proud flesh shall be cut out with the knife, and the wound burned with fire, in order that it may heal the more rapidly. the storm of the revolution will shake the earth. thrones will tremble, and princes fall down in the dust. the people will be lashed to fury, like the waves of the storm-tossed sea. but the holy church will be the little vessel that bids the sea be still, and stems the tide of the people's wrath by leading them back to humility and belief. anger makes blind, and in their blindness they can the more readily be fettered. we, the invisible fathers, use the people to terrify the rulers. in all parts of europe, the fathers and brothers of our order are preparing this work of destruction and overthrow, in order that the noble and sublime may be built up anew out of the débris. oh, my brothers, perform diligently your allotted task! in the name of the invisible fathers, i deliver over to you this kingdom and this king! govern him, and make him serviceable to the holy order and the holy church. you shall rule in prussia. build up the good, destroy the evil! but the greatest good is, belief; the greatest evil, unbelief! root out the king's unbelief! you will be justified in using any means, for the end sanctifies the means; and even that which is in itself vile, becomes a holy weapon in the hands of the chosen!--and now, my brothers, i bid you a final adieu; my time has expired, i must go!" "oh, master, do not leave us!" cried bischofswerder. "stay with us, and promote our holy ends." "stay with us, and assist us in leading the king back to the right path," exclaimed wöllner. "you can accomplish it without my assistance. your will is strong, and his resistance will be but feeble! you shall be the kings of prussia; you shall reign in the land! but do not forget that as rulers you will still be servants!" "that we will never forget! we will ever obey the commands of the invisibles, and faithfully execute their will as announced to us by your sublime lips!" "who knows that my lips will never speak to you again," said cagliostro, in a sad voice. "i wander through the world on the verge of an abyss, and the storm and revolution are my companions. from the murder and bloodshed of the revolution, the church will blossom afresh. remember these words, ye brothers of the cross and of the roses! remember them, and farewell forever!" chapter xi. the will. the solemn ceremony was over. the body of the great king had been borne forth from the apartments in which he had governed prussia for so many years; from the house which had been his chief delight on earth, and which was thenceforth to stand as a monument of his life. but the deceased king's commands and wishes were disregarded in the very beginning. and it was made manifest to the world that his successor did not intend to walk in his footsteps, and did not share his independent views on religious subjects, and his freedom from all prejudices. frederick had caused a burial vault to be built for himself on the terraces. he desired that his body should find a last resting-place in the garden which he had made, and near the house in which he had lived with his friends, and in which he had been so happy! but his successor considered such a resting-place, in the temple of nature, and under the dome erected by the hand of the almighty, an unfit abode for the remains of a king. he considered the temple of brick and mortar erected by the hand of man a far more worthy receptacle for the dead monarch. the philosopher of sans-souci had not attended church for many years; and now, as if to proclaim to the world that a revolution had taken place in prussia, the king's body was deposited in the church. to the garrison church in potsdam, where the plain and unadorned coffin of king frederick william the first had been placed in the vault under the altar, the gloomy funeral procession of the dead ruler wended its way on the evening of the eighteenth of august. his generals and officers, the magistrate of potsdam, and the members of his household, followed the funeral car. but his successor, king frederick william, and the princes and princesses, were not present. in solitude, as he had lived, king frederick descended into the dark vault in which the coffin of his father awaited him. in life, they had kept at a distance from each other; death now brought them together, and their mortal remains lay side by side in peace and tranquillity. death reconciles all things; in his hands even kings are but as the dust of the earth. on the morning after frederick's interment, king frederick william repaired to sans-souci, where the opening and reading of the monarch's will was to take place. the royal princes, who had not accompanied the king's body to its last resting-place, were by no means absent on this momentous occasion, and princes henry and ferdinand, and even the princess amelia, frederick's sister, who was decrepit from age, and deformed by the mental and bodily anguish she had undergone, had come to sans-souci to be present at the reading of the will. these three were standing in an alcove, conversing eagerly, but in an undertone. their manner was expressive of resentment and anger, and the glances which they from time to time cast toward the door through which the king was expected to enter, were full of hatred and derision. "bischofswerder has been made colonel; and wöllner, privy-councillor," murmured prince henry, bitterly; "even that abominable fellow, rietz, has received a title. but he never thought of his family; for us there are no favors." "and how could there be?" rejoined princess amelia, in her sharp, scornful voice. "the favorites stand where the golden shower falls, and you do not desire that we should do likewise, i hope? i, for my part, shall certainly decline the honor of standing at wilhelmine enke's side; nor have i any desire to share the royal favor with the king's new flame, the maid of honor, von voss." "she will soon hold an important position," whispered prince ferdinand. "the king intends to make her his wife." "impossible!" exclaimed the hoarse voice of the princess. "that is, unless our dear nephew first manages to put his legitimate wife out of the way with the aid of his sorcerers." "perhaps he intends to take king solomon as his model," said prince henry, derisively. "he also was an arch-profligate, although he was accounted a most holy and worthy king." "let him pronounce a solomon's judgment on himself," screeched the princess; "let him cut himself in three pieces: one for the queen, a second for wilhelmine enke, and the third for the new favorite." "the last must, however, be spoken of with the greatest deference," whispered prince ferdinand. "the king will have it so. the maid of honor, von voss, is exceedingly virtuous, and insists on a marriage. the king had an interview with the young lady on the day of frederick's death; and she then imposed three conditions: she demands that the queen's consent be first obtained, then a church marriage, and finally the king's separation from madame rietz." "the queen will not give her consent," said princess amelia. "she has already done so! the privy-chamberlain rietz accomplished this masterpiece of diplomacy. the king pays his wife's debts, and doubles her pin-money; and for this consideration she consents to the marriage of the left hand."[27] "they are all mercenary creatures, these women," muttered prince henry. "they are like dissembling cats, that are always ready to scratch and betray their best friends. in this respect a queen is no better than a beggar-woman! for money, a queen compromises her honor and her rights; and permits a virtuous mantle to be thrown over vice. but this time it will be of no avail, since no priest can be found to consummate this unlawful marriage." "you are mistaken, my dear brother," said prince ferdinand, smiling. "one has already been found. the king asked advice of his newly-appointed privy-councillor wöllner. this fellow was formerly a preacher, as you well know, and is therefore well acquainted with priestly stratagems. he proved to the king, by historical references, that such double marriages were possible, and that even luther had permitted the landgrave philip to contract a marriage of this kind. moreover, he called the king's attention to the fact, that he was an ordained preacher himself, and, as such, entitled to exercise the functions of that calling, and offered to perform the ceremony himself." "they are all mercenary creatures, these men," said princess amelia, with a malicious side glance at her brother, prince henry. "i am surprised to hear that, my dear sister," remarked prince henry. "it seems you have changed your opinion of men very materially." "no," she rejoined, angrily, "no, i have always known that men were miserable creatures. there were only two exceptions: the one was my brother frederick, and the other was the man whom even the great king frederick could not keep in fetters--he who broke the heaviest bars and strongest chains with the strength of his invincible spirit, and liberated himself in defiance of all kings and jailers. i thank you, henry, for reminding me of him! my heart has been envenomed by mankind, and is old and withered, but it grows warm and young again when i think of him for whom i suffered so much, and who made of me the old hag i now am.--but here comes the king, our dear nephew." and amelia, whose countenance had been illumined for a moment with a ray of youth, resumed her spiteful and gloomy look, and hobbled toward her dear nephew, who was just entering the chamber, followed by count von herzberg and the newly-appointed minister of state, von voss. "how handsome your majesty looks!" cried princess amelia, in her hoarse voice; "how young and handsome! if it were not for the thin hair, the embonpoint, and the dear wife, one might take your majesty for a youthful adonis, going a wooing, and--" "and who has the misfortune to meet a bad fairy[28] on the road. but it makes no difference, custom has robbed your evil glance of its terrors, and we will never cease to love and esteem you. i beg leave to assure my dear aunt amelia, as well as my two uncles, that i will always remain their affectionate and devoted nephew, and that it will afford me the greatest pleasure to gratify their wishes. however, we will speak of this hereafter, but now let us consider the grave purpose for which we have come together. count von herzberg, i beg you to conduct the ambassador of the duke of brunswick to our presence." the king seated himself on the sofa which stood in the middle of the room. princess amelia and the two princes seated themselves in chairs, in his immediate vicinity. in front of them, and near the window, stood a table covered with green cloth, and beside it three elegantly carved chairs. this was frederick the great's writing-desk, the desk at which he had thought and labored so much for the welfare and honor of his kingdom and subjects. "baron von hardenberg, minister, and extraordinary ambassador of his highness, the duke of brunswick," cried count herzberg as he entered and presented this gentleman to the king. baron von hardenberg bowed with the grace of a courtier and an elegant man of the world, and then looked up at the king, expectantly, with an air of perfect ease and composure. "speak, baron von hardenberg," said the king, with some little embarrassment, after a short pause. "my uncle, the duke of brunswick, sends you. what message does the baron bring?" "sir, i bring, at the command of my gracious master, the duke, the last will and testament of king frederick the second, of blessed memory--with unbroken seals, and in exactly the same condition as when years ago delivered by his deceased majesty to the duke, and by him deposited in the state archives at brunswick, where it has remained until now." the baron handed the sealed document to the king, and begged him, and the princes, and ministers, to examine the seals, to assure themselves that they had not been tampered with, and requested his majesty to break them, and open the will, after having satisfied himself of that fact. after this had been done, and after herzberg had testified to frederick's handwriting, the king returned the document to baron von hardenberg. "you brought us these last greetings and injunctions of the great king, and it is therefore but just and proper that you, as the representative of the duke, should make us acquainted with the contents of the will. i authorize you to read it aloud. seat yourself at that table between my two ministers. and now read." count von hardenberg spread the document out on the table, and commenced to read in a loud and sonorous voice, as follows: "life is but a fleeting transition from birth to death. man's destiny is to labor for the welfare of society, of which he is a member, during this brief period. since the duty of managing the affairs of state first devolved upon me, i have endeavored, with all the powers given me by nature, to make the state which i had the honor to govern happy and prosperous. i have caused justice to be administered, i have brought order and exactitude into the finances, and i have introduced that discipline into the army, which makes it superior to the other troops of europe. after having done my duty to the state, in this manner, it would be a subject of unceasing self-reproach, if i neglected that which concerns my family. therefore, in order to avoid the dissensions which might arise among the members of my family in regard to the inheritance, i herewith declare to them this my last will and testament: "(1.) i willingly, and without regret, return the breath of life which animates me to beneficent nature, which honored me with its bestowal, and this body to the elements of which it is composed. i have lived a philosopher, and i desire to be buried as such, without pomp, show, or splendor. i desire neither to be dissected nor embalmed. i desire to be buried in sans-souci, on the terrace and in the vault which i have had prepared for the reception of my body. in this manner the prince of nassau was laid to rest in a wood near cleve. should i die in time of war, or on a journey, my body must be conveyed to the most convenient place, and afterwards to sans-souci in the winter, and deposited as above directed. "(2.) i bequeath to my dear nephew, frederick william, my successor to the crown, the kingdom of prussia, provinces, states, castles, fortifications, places, munitions, and arsenals, lands which are mine by right of conquest or inheritance, all the crown jewels which are in the hands of the queen, my wife, the gold and silver plate in berlin, my villas, libraries, collections of medals, picture galleries, gardens, etc., etc. moreover, i leave him the state treasure as he may find it at my death, in trust. it belongs to the state, and must only be used in defending or assisting the people. "(3.) if death compels me to leave unpaid some small debts, my nephew shall pay them. such is my will. "(4.) i bequeath to the queen, my wife, the revenue she now draws, with the addition of ten thousand dollars per annum, two tuns of wine each year, free wood, and game for her table. under this condition, the queen has consented to make my nephew her heir. moreover, as there is no suitable dwelling that can be set apart as her residence, i content myself with mentioning, for form's sake, stettin as an appropriate place. at the same time, i request of my nephew that he hold suitable lodgings in readiness for her in the palace in berlin, and that he show a proper consideration for the widow of his uncle, and for a princess whose virtue is above all reproach. "(5.) and now, we come to the allodial estate. i have never been either miserly or rich, nor have i ever had much to dispose of. i have considered the state revenues as the ark of the covenant, which none but consecrated hands might touch. i have never appropriated the public revenues to my own use. my own expenses have never exceeded the sum of two hundred thousand dollars; and my administration leaves me in perfect quietude of conscience, and i do not fear to give the public a strict account of it. "(6.) i appoint my nephew frederick william residuary legatee of my allodial estate, after having paid out the following legacies." after the king, in twenty-four additional clauses, had named a legacy for all of his relatives, either in money, jewels, or something else, and after he had determined the pensions for the invalid officers and soldiers of his army, and for his servants, the testament continued: "i recommend to my successor that he honor and esteem his blood, in the persons of his uncles, aunts, and all other relatives. accident, which determines the destiny of man, also regulates the succession. but the one, because he becomes king, is no better than the others. i, therefore, recommend to all my relatives that they live in a good understanding with each other; and that they, if it be necessary, sacrifice their personal interests to the welfare of the fatherland and the advantage of the state. "my last wishes when i die will be for the happiness of this kingdom. may it ever be governed with justice, wisdom, and strength! may it be the happiest of states, through the mildness of its laws; may its administration in respect to finance ever be good and just; may it ever be most gallantly defended by an army that breathes only for honor and fair renown; and may it last and flourish to the end of all centuries!" "amen! amen!" exclaimed the king, folding his hands piously, when baron von hardenberg had concluded. "amen! the intentions of my great and exalted uncle shall be carried out in all things! god bless prussia, and give me strength to govern it and make it happy! i thank you, baron, and promise myself the pleasure of a confidential interview with you to-morrow morning before you take your departure." his ministers having retired with the ambassador, in compliance with an intimation from the king that they might do so, frederick william now turned with a gracious and genial smile to princess amelia and her two brothers, who, like the king, had arisen from their seats. "my exalted uncle particularly recommended that i should consider the welfare of my uncles and aunts," said frederick. "i assure you, however, that this recommendation was unnecessary; without it, i would have been only too happy to contribute to your happiness and welfare, to the extent of my ability. i beg each of you, therefore, to prefer some request, the gratification of which will serve as a remembrance of this solemn occasion.--speak, prince henry; speak, my dear uncle; name some favor that i can grant." the prince started, and a glowing color flitted over the countenance that was an exact copy of the deceased king's. the word "favor," which frederick's smiling lips had uttered, pierced the prince's heart like a poisoned arrow. "sire," said he, sharply, "i crave no favor whatever at your hands, unless it might be considered a favor that my rights be protected, and justice be shown me, in the matter of my claims to a certain succession." "to exercise justice is no favor, but a duty," replied the king, mildly; "and my dear uncle henry will certainly be protected in all his rightful claims." "in my claims to the succession in the margraviate schwedt?" inquired prince henry, hurriedly; and his eyes, which were large, luminous, and keen, like frederick's, fastened a piercing glance on his nephew's countenance. frederick william shrugged his shoulders. "that is a political question, which must be decided in a ministerial council, and not in a family conference." "that is to say, in other words," screeched amelia, with mocking laughter, "prince henry will always belong to the dear family, but never to the number of the king's ministers and councillors." the king, actuated perhaps by a desire to turn the conversation, now addressed prince ferdinand: "and you, my dear uncle, have you no particular wish to impart?" the prince smiled. "i am not ambitious, and my finances are fortunately in good order. i recommend myself and family to the king's good-will. i should be particularly pleased if my oldest son louis could be honored with the protection of his royal uncle." "he shall stand on the same footing with my son," said the king. "i desire him to be the friend and companion of my son frederick william; and i trust that he will infuse some of his spirit and fire into the latter. the young princes are made to complete each other, and i shall be glad to see them become close friends.--and now, my dear aunt and princess," continued the king, as he turned to amelia, "will you be kind enough to name your wishes." the princess shrugged her shoulders. "i am not ambitious, like brother henry, and i have no children to care for, like brother ferdinand. my own wants are few, and i am not fond enough of mankind to desire to collect riches in order that i may fill empty pockets and feast those who are in want. life has not been a bed of roses for me, why should i make it pleasant for others? there is but one i desire to make happy; he, like myself, has lived through long years of misery, and can sing a mournful song of the hard-heartedness and cruelty of mankind. sire, i crave nothing for myself, but i crave a ray of sunshine for him who was buried in the darkness of a prison, who was robbed of his sun for so many long years. i crave for an old man the ray of happiness of which his youth and manhood were wickedly deprived. sire, in my opinion, there is but one shadow on the memory of my exalted brother. this shadow is frederick trenck.[29] let justice prevail. restore to von trenck the estates of which he was unjustly deprived; restore the title and military rank of which he was robbed. sire, do this, and i, whom misery has made a bad fairy, will hereafter be nothing more than a good-natured and withered old mummy, who will fold her hands and pray with her last breath for the good and generous king who made frederick von trenck happy." "it shall be as my dear aunt desires," said the king, with emotion. "frederick von trenck shall be put in possession of his estates, and restored to his military and civic honors. we will also invite him to our court, and he shall not have to fear being again thrown into the gloomy dungeons of magdeburg, although princess amelia should smile graciously upon him." the princess distorted the poor old face, which was so completely disfigured with scars, in an attempt at a smile, which was only a grimace; and she was herself unaware that the veil which had suddenly dimmed her eyes was a tear. for long years she had neither wept nor smiled, and shed tears to-day for the first time again. for the first time in many years she thanked god, on retiring, for having been permitted to see the light of this day. she no longer desired to die, but prayed that she might live until she had seen frederick von trenck--until she had received his forgiveness for the misery she had caused him! to-day, for the first time, the embittered mind of the princess was touched with a feeling of thankfulness and joy. and it came from the bottom of her heart, when she said to frederick william, on taking leave of him after the reading of the will: "i wish i were not a bad, but rather a good fairy, for i could then give you the receipt for making your people and yourself happy!" the king smiled at this. he had that receipt already! he had received it in the elixir of life which cagliostro had given him. these drops were the receipt for his personal happiness; and, as for making the people happy, bischofswerder and wöllner must know the receipts necessary to effect that object. in their hands the king will confidently place the helm of state. they are the favorites of the invisible fathers; the chosen, the powerful. and they shall rule prussia, they, the rosicrucians! this thought filled the king's heart with joy, but it filled the hearts of the opponents of the pious brotherhood, of the enemies of bischofswerder and wöllner, with dismay and anxiety. and the number of their enemies was great, and many of them were men of high rank and standing. there was also at the court a party which entertained bitter but secret enmity to the rosicrucians. chapter xii. leuchsenring. at the head of the opposition party at court stood franz michael leuchsenring, the prince royal's instructor, goethe's friend, and a member of the former hain association. he had been called to berlin by frederick the great to assume the position of french tutor to the future king of prussia, and impart to him a thorough knowledge of french literature. baron von hardenberg sought out the tutor, whom he had known and loved for many years, on the morning after the reading of the will. the meeting of these long-separated friends was hearty and cordial, and yet the keen glance of the ambassador did not fail to detect the cloud which rested on leuchsenring's countenance. after they had shaken hands, and exchanged a few questions and remarks relative to each other's health and circumstances, the baron raised his delicate white hand and pointed to leuchsenring's brow. "i see a shadow there," said he, smiling; "a shadow which i never before observed on my friend's forehead. is the handsome leuchsenring no longer the favorite of the ladies, and consequently of the muses also? or have we again some detestable rival, who dares to contend with you for a fair maid's favor? i know what that is; i saw you in the rôle of orlando furioso more than once, when we were together in the elysian fields of naples, where we first met and joined hands in friendship. my friend, why did we not remain in bella italia! why has the prose of life sobered us down, and made of you the teacher, and of me the servant of a prince!--but enough of this; and now answer this question: who is the rival? am i to be your second here in berlin, as i was on three occasions in naples?" leuchsenring smiled: "i observe, with pleasure, my dear baron, that your ministerial rank has not changed you. you are still the same merry, thoughtless cavalier; while i, really, i can no longer deny it, have become a misanthrope. with me gayety and love are things of the past; and, unfortunately, women have nothing to do with the shadow which your keen glance detected." "and more unfortunately still, you have become a politician," exclaimed the baron, smiling. "what i have heard is then true; you no longer write love-letters, but occupy yourself with learned treatises. you have joined a political party?" "it is true," said leuchsenring, emphatically. "i am filled with anger and hatred when i see these advocates of darkness, that is, these rosicrucians, or, in other words, these jesuits, attempting to cast their vast tissue of falsehood over mankind. i feel it to be my duty to tear asunder its meshes and lay bare the toils in which they hoped to involve mankind." "bravo, bravo!" cried hardenberg. "i am delighted to hear you declare your views in this manner. i now perceive that you are in earnest. and i will give you a proof of my confidence by asking your advice in my personal affairs. king frederick william has honored me with an audience, and i have just left his presence. it seems his majesty has taken a fancy to me; some effeminate feature in my countenance has found the highest appreciation. to be brief, the king has graciously proposed to me to enter his service; he offers me a ministerial position." "and what reply did you make to this proposition?" asked leuchsenring, eagerly. "i begged some little time for consideration. i was not sufficiently acquainted with the political phase, and i desired to discuss the matter with you, my friend, before coming to a decision. and now, give me your opinion. shall i accept?" "first tell me what you are, and then i will reply. tell me whether you are a rosicrucian, that is, a jesuit, or whether you have remained a faithful brother of our society? give me your hand, let me touch it with the secret sign; and now tell me if you are still a brother." "i am," said hardenberg, his jovial face assuming an earnest expression, and he touched leuchsenring's extended hand in a peculiar manner. "the grasp of this hand proclaims to you that i have remained true to the society; and that i am still a brother of the order and a zealous freemason." "thanks be to god that you are my friend!" cried leuchsenring. "then you are with me, with those who are preparing for the future, and erecting a barrier in the minds of mankind to the present tide of evil. and now i will answer your question. do not accept the offer which has been made you, but save yourself for the future, for the coming generation. gloomy days are in store for prussia, and the good genius of the german fatherland must veil its head and weep over the impending horrors. the demons of darkness are at work in the land. superstition, hypocrisy, jesuitism, and lasciviousness, have combined to fetter the understanding and the hearts of men. a period of darkness such as usually precedes the great convulsions and epochs of history will soon come for prussia. believe me, we are standing on a crater. the royal favorites are covering it with flowers and garlands; the royal rosicrucians are administering elixirs and wonder-working potions, to obscure the eye and shut out the fearful vision. they are, however, not arresting the progress of the chariot of fate, but are urging it on in its destructive career. as good springs from evil, so will freedom spring from slavery. the oppression which rulers have been exercising on their subjects for centuries, will now bear its avenging fruits. the slaves will break their fetters, and make freemen of themselves." "ah, my friend," exclaimed hardenberg, shrugging his shoulders; "you see the realization of unattainable ideals; unfortunately, i cannot believe in it. tell me, by what means are these poor, enslaved nations to break their fetters and make freemen of themselves?" "i will tell you, and make your soul shudder. the slaves, the down-trodden nations, will free themselves by the fearful means of revolution. it already agitates every soul, and throbs in every heart. the time of peace and tranquillity is at end; the storm no longer rages in the heads and hearts of poets only, but in every human heart. the thoughts and songs of the poets have pierced the heart of nations, and fermented a storm that will soon burst forth; as it sweeps along it will destroy the old and build up the new. with his 'robbers,' schiller hurled the firebrand into the mind of youth, and princes and rulers are feeding and nourishing the enkindled flame with the trumpery of their gold-glittering rags, and their vices. this flame will blaze up until it becomes a mighty conflagration. the vices of princes are the scourges chosen by god, to chastise the nations, in order that they may rise up from the dust, and that slaves may become men! louis the fifteenth of france, with all his crimes and vices, was an instrument in the hands of the almighty. and marie antoinette, with her love of pleasure, her frivolity, and her extravagance, is such an instrument, as is also frederick william of prussia, with all his thoughtlessness, his good-nature, and his indolence. even this hypocritical generation of vipers, this lying, deceiving brotherhood, these rosicrucians and jesuits, must serve god's purposes. falsehood exists only to make truth manifest; and bondage, only to promote liberty. therefore i will not complain, although vice should be triumphant for a while. the greater the success of evil now, the greater the triumph of good hereafter. the greater the number of jesuits who execute their dark deeds now, the greater the number who will be destroyed." "they exist only in your imagination, my exalted friend," said hardenberg, smiling. "there are not any jesuits in prussia." "they are everywhere," said leuchsenring, interrupting him, and grasping his friend's arm in his earnestness. "yes, there are jesuits. they go about with us, they sit with us at table, they grasp our hands as friends, they flatter us as our admirers, they smile on us in the persons of the women we love, they leave no means untried to fetter our hearts and understanding. the rosicrucians, what are they, one and all, but disguised jesuits! they wish to impose catholicism on us, and drive out protestantism. they wish to mystify the mind, and make the soul grovel in sin and vice, from which condition the victims around whom they have woven their toils will only be permitted to escape by flying to the bosom of the catholic church. to the bosom of that church which offers an asylum to all restless consciences, and dispenses blessings and forgiveness for all vices and crimes. for this reason, these rosicrucians tempt the good-natured, thoughtless king to luxury and debauchery; for this reason they terrify his mind with apparitions and ghosts! in his terror he is to seek and find safety in the catholic church! i see through their disguise; and they know it. for this reason, they hate me; and they cry out against me because i have exposed their wiles and stratagems, and proclaimed that these vile rosicrucians are jesuits in disguise, whose object is the expansion of catholicism over the earth. this i proclaimed in a treatise, which aroused the sleeping, and convinced the doubting, and excited the wrath of the rosicrucians against me." "i have heard of it," said hardenberg, thoughtfully. "i heard of your having hurled a defiant article at the secret societies, through the medium of the 'berlin monthly magazine;'[30] but, unfortunately, i could never obtain a copy." "that i can readily believe," said leuchsenring, laughing; "the dear rosicrucians bought up the whole edition of the monthly magazine. when the new one is published, they will buy that up, too, in order to suppress the truth. but they will not succeed. truth is mighty, and will prevail; and we freemasons and brothers of the order of the illuminati, will help to make truth victorious. we freemasons are the champions of freedom and enlightenment. many of the most influential and distinguished men of berlin have joined our order, and are battling with us against the advocates of darkness and ignorance--against the jesuits and rosicrucians. we call ourselves illuminati, because we intend to illumine the darkness of the rosicrucians, and manifest truth, in annihilating falsehood! my friend, the struggle for which we are preparing will be a hard one, for the number of rosicrucians and jesuits is vast, and a king is their protector. the number of the illuminati is comparatively small; and only the kings of intellect and science, not, however, of power and wealth, belong to our brotherhood. but we shall overthrow the jesuits, nevertheless. we stand on the watch-tower of prussia, and our protestant watchword is luther's word, 'the word they shall not touch.'" "well said, my gallant friend," cried hardenberg. "your ardor inspires me, your enthusiasm is contagious. i will take part in this great and noble struggle. admit me into your order!" "you shall become one of us! a meeting of our brotherhood takes place this evening at the house of our chieftain nicolai. you must accompany me, and i will see that you are admitted." "and then, when i have become a member of your order, and am enrolled among the number of the enemies of the jesuits and rosicrucians, you will no doubt consider it advisable for me to accept the king's proposition?" "no, my friend, i cannot approve of it; i cannot advise you to do so." "how? you do not desire me to remain and fight at your side? you despise my assistance?" "i do not despise your assistance; i only wish to spare you for better times. i have a high opinion of your capacities, and it would be a pity if your usefulness should be prematurely destroyed. but this would be the case if you remained here at present. the rosicrucians are not only mighty, but are also cunning. they would soon recognize an enemy in the minister of state, and would not be slow in relieving him of his office and power. they would pursue the same course with you that they have pursued with me." "what course have they pursued with you? in what can the instructor of the prince royal have offended--the instructor appointed by frederick the great? what harm can the rosicrucians do him?" leuchsenring took up an open letter which lay on the writing-desk, and smiled as he handed it to hardenberg. "read this," said he, "it will answer your question." hardenberg glanced quickly over the few lines which the letter contained, and then let it fall on the table again with an air of dejection. "dismissed!" he murmured. "the body of the late king is hardly under ground, and they already dare to disregard his will, and send you your dismissal." "they go further," said leuchsenring, angrily. "they not only dismiss me, but what is still worse, they have appointed a rosicrucian to fill my position. general count brühl has been selected to give the finishing touch to the education of the young prince." "and you will now leave berlin, i suppose?" said hardenberg. "well, then, my friend, i make you a proposition. you do not desire me to remain here; i now propose to you to accompany me to brunswick. save yourself and your ability for better times, save yourself for the future!" "no, i will remain," cried leuchsenring, with determination. "i will not afford the rosicrucians the pleasure of seeing me desert my post; i will defend it to the last drop of my blood. i will remain, and the jesuits and rosicrucians shall ever find in me a watchful and relentless enemy. all those brave men to whom god has given the sword of intellect, will battle at my side. the rosicrucians will bring gloom and darkness over prussia, but we, the illuminati, will dissipate this darkness. the vicious and the weak belong to the former, but the virtuous and strong, and the youth of the nation, will join the ranks of the illuminati. oh, my friend, this will be a spirit-warfare, protracted beyond death, like the struggles of the grim huns. the spirits of falsehood must, however, eventually succumb to the heavenly might of truth; and darkness must, at last, yield to light! this is my hope, this is my banner of faith; and therefore do i remain here in defiance of my enemies, the rosicrucians. this struggle, this spirit-warfare, is my delight--it excites, elevates, and refreshes me. but when the victory is ours, when the new era begins, when the old has been torn down, and the new prussia is to be built up, then your time will come, my friend; you shall be the architect selected to erect this stately edifice. for the dark days of the rosicrucians and king frederick william, your services are not available. but after these will come the bright days of the young king, and at his side you shall stand as friend and councillor! for, believe me, king frederick william the second will only pass over the horizon of prussia, and darken the existence of the people, like a storm-cloud, with its thunder and lightning. but cloud and darkness will be dissipated, and after this, day will dawn again, and the sun will once more shine. you have come to berlin to see prussia's unhappiness, but you shall now see something else. i will show you prussia's hope, and prussia's future!--come!" he took his friend's arm and led him to the window, which commanded a fine view of the adjoining garden. it was only a plain garden, with walks of yellow sand, and beds of ordinary flowers. a bench stood under an apple-tree, covered with fruit, on the main walk, and between two flower-beds. on this bench, two boys, or rather two youths, were sitting, attired in plain, civil dress. the one was very handsome, and well-made; his large, bright eyes were turned upward, the loud tones of his voice could be heard at the window, and his animated gestures seemed to indicate that he was reciting some poem, and was carried away with enthusiasm. the other, a tall youth of sixteen, with the soft, blue eyes, the mild countenance, and good-natured expression, was listening attentively to his companion's declamation. it was the latter whom leuchsenring pointed out to his friend. "see," said he, "that is the future king of prussia, king frederick william the third, that is to be. at his side you are to stand as councillor; and he will need your advice and assistance. he will reap the bitter harvest which will spring from the seed the jesuits and rosicrucians are now sowing. save yourself for frederick william the third, baron hardenberg, and do not waste your talents and energies in the unfruitful service of frederick william the second." "the one you point out, the one with the fair hair, and the mild, diffident expression, is then the prince royal of prussia. i wish you had shown me the other, that handsome lad, that youthful apollo, with the proud smile and piercing eye. i wish he were the future king of prussia." "that is prince louis, the present king's nephew. you are right, he looks like a youthful apollo. if he were the future king, he would either lift prussia up to the skies, or else hurl it into an abyss, for he is a genius, and he will not tread the beaten track of life. no, it is better that his gentle young friend should some day wear the crown of prussia. they have increased his natural timidity by severe treatment. he has no confidence in himself, but he has good, strong sense and an honest heart, and these qualities are of more importance for a king than genius and enthusiasm. i do not know why it is, my friend, but i love this poor, reserved boy, who has suffered and endured so much in his youth. i love this prince, who has so warm a heart, but can never find words to express his feelings. i pity him, for i know that his youthful heart is burdened with a secret sorrow. i have divined the cause, in an occasional word which escapes his lips unawares, and in his manner at times. it is the sorrow of an affectionate and tender-hearted son, who wishes to love and esteem his father, but dares not look at him, for fear of seeing the spots and shadows which darken that father's countenance." "poor, poor lad!" said hardenberg, moved with sympathy. "so young, and yet such bitter experience! but, perhaps, it is well that such should be the case; if he has received the baptism of tears, and has been anointed with affliction, he may become a king by the grace of god! i will do as you say, leuchsenring; i will save myself for the future, and, if such be the will of god, i will one day serve your young king of the future." "and something tells me that god will permit you to do so," cried leuchsenring, joyously. "it may be that i will not live to see the day. my enemies, the rosicrucians, may have destroyed, or the storm-wind of the revolution have swept me away by that time; but you will remain, and at some future day you will remember the hour in which i showed you the young prince royal, frederick william the third. he is the future of prussia, and, in the dark day which is now dawning, we are in sore need of a guiding light. fix your eye on the prince royal of prussia, and on his genial friend, prince louis ferdinand!" book iii. chapter i. schiller in dresden. "that is false, i say; false!" cried schiller, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, as he walked to and fro in his little room. "it is all slander, vile slander!" the two friends, the young councillor of the consistory, körner, and the bookseller, göschen, stood together in the window recess, gazing sadly and sympathetically at the poet, who rushed to and fro, almost breathless with rage, hurling an angry glance at his friends, whenever he approached them. suddenly he stopped, and fastened his gaze on them, intently. "why do you not reply?" asked he, in loud and wrathful tones. "why do you allow me to accuse you both of a falsehood, without even attempting to justify yourselves?" "because we wish to give your just anger time to expend itself," said körner, in his soft, mild voice. "to our own great sorrow we have been compelled to wound our friend's feelings, and it is quite natural that this wound should smart." "and we do not justify ourselves against these reproaches, because they do not apply to us," added göschen, "and because they are only the utterance of your just indignation. believe me, my friend, we would gladly have spared you this hour, but our friendship was greater than our pity." "yes, yes, the old story," cried schiller, with mocking laughter. "out of friendship, you are pitiless; out of friendship you give the death-blow to my heart! and what the most cruel enemy would hardly have the courage to whisper in my ear, merciful friendship boldly declares!" [illustration: schiller.] "schiller, you are deceived! schiller, the girl you love is a cold-hearted coquette, who does not love you, who only keeps you in leading-strings, in order to extort presents from you, and to be able to say that a poet adores her!" "but i will give no credit to such unworthy insinuations! my love shall not be regarded as a mere mockery. you shall not have the pitiful triumph of tearing me from the girl i love. i declare to you and the whole world, i love her, i love the beautiful, the admired, the courted marie von arnim. to her belong my thoughts, my wishes, and my hopes. she is my ideal of beauty, of youth, and of female loveliness. i exult in this love; it will raise me from the dust of earth to the sphere of the eternal and immortal gods!" "my poor friend!" sighed körner, "like your love, the gods only exist in your poetical fancy. listen to reason, schiller!" "reason!" cried he, stamping the floor, wrathfully. "that means the dry insipidity of every-day life, instead of life's festival, wreathed with flowers. no, i will not listen to reason; for you call it reason to consider it possible that the most divine creature on earth could be a base coquette!" "now you go too far, schiller," said göschen, eagerly, "no one made such grave accusations against the daughter. we only said of the mother that she misused your love for her daughter, and that she would never consent to your union. we said that the beautiful young lady was aware of this, and continued to receive your attentions, although she knew the gentleman selected by her mother as her future husband, and would finally consent to marry him. as friends, we conceived it to be our duty to tell you this, in order that you might no longer be deceived in your noblest impulses, and continue to throw away your love, your confidence, and your money, on unworthy objects." "that is the word," cried schiller, with mocking laughter, "now you have uttered the right word! my money, or rather _your_ money, you would say! you tremble for your vile dross! you made me advances, and don carlos is not yet completed. you now fear that my love might distract my attention, and draw me from my work, and that the two hundred dollars which--" "frederick schiller!" cried körner, interrupting him, while göschen turned away, his lips trembling, and his eyes filled with tears; "frederick schiller, now you are unjust; and that, a friend must not be, even in his deepest grief. vile dross has nothing to do with this sacrifice of friendship, and it was not for its sake that we undertook the thankless office of making the blind see. you well know that göschen is a noble and disinterested friend, who rejoiced in being permitted to help the poet of don carlos out of his difficulties, but it is, of course, painful to him to see the loving, confiding man, squander what the poet earns." "it is true, it is true!" cried schiller, "i am unjust! i reproach you instead of reproaching myself, and myself only. oh, my friends, forgive these utterances of my anguish, consider what i endure! you are both so happy; you have all that can lend a charm to life, and adorn it. you are wealthy, you do not know what it is to have to contend with want, and to struggle for existence, nor have you any knowledge of that more painful struggle, the warfare of life without love, without some being who loves you, and is wholly yours. you, my friends, have loved and loving wives, who are yours with every fibre of their being. you have also well-appointed households, and are provided with all that is requisite to enable you to exercise a generous hospitality. but, look at me, the solitary, homeless beggar, who calls nothing on earth his own but that spark of enthusiasm which burns in his heart, who must flee to the ideal, in order to escape the too rude grasp of reality. why must i alone rise from the richly-laden table of life with unsatisfied hunger? why are the stars, for me, merely candles of the night, that give me light in my labors, and the sun only an economical heating apparatus, to which i am only in so far indebted as it saves me expensive fuel for my stove in winter. grant me my portion of the repast which the gods have prepared for all mortals, let me also partake of the golden hesperian fruit. my friends, have pity on the poor wanderer, who has been journeying through the desert of life, and would now recline on the green oasis and rest his weary limbs!" he sank down into a chair, and covered his quivering face with his trembling hands. his two friends stood at his side regarding him sorrowfully. neither of them had the cruel courage to break in upon this paroxysm of anguish with a word of encouragement or consolation. a pause ensued, in which the silence was interrupted only by schiller's deep-drawn sighs, and the few indistinct words, which he from time to time murmured to himself. but suddenly he arose, and when he withdrew his hands from his face its expression was completely changed. his countenance was no longer quivering with pain and flushed with anger, but was pale, and his glance defiant. and when he now shook back the long yellow hair which shaded his brow, with a quick movement of the head, he looked like a lion shaking his mane, and preparing to do battle with an approaching enemy. "enough of these lamentations and womanish complaints," said he, in a resolute, hoarse voice. "i will be a man who has the courage to listen to the worst and defy the greatest agony. repeat all that you have said. i will not interrupt you again, either with complaints or reproaches. i know that you are actuated by the kindest intentions, and that, like the good surgeon, you only desire to apply the knife and fire to my wounded heart in order to heal it. and now, speak, my friends! repeat what you have said!" he walked hastily across the room to the little window, stood there with his back turned to the room, and beat the window-panes impatiently with his cold hands. "frederick, why repeat what is already burning in your head and heart?" said körner, gently. "why turn the knife once more in the wound, and tell you that your noble, generous love is not appreciated, not honored? the best and fairest princess of the world would have reason to consider herself happy and blessed, if the poet by the grace of god loved her; and yet his noble, generous love is misused by a cold, calculating woman, and made the means of adorning its object for richer suitors." "proofs!" cried schiller, imperiously, and he drummed away at the window-panes till they fairly rang. "it is difficult for others to give proofs in such cases," replied körner, in a low voice. "you cannot prove to the man who is walking onward with closed eyes, that he is on the verge of a precipice; you can only warn him and entreat him to open his eyes, that he may see the danger which menaces. we have only considered it our duty to repeat to you what is known by all dresden, and what all your acquaintances and friends say: that this madame von arnim has come to dresden to seek a husband of rank and fortune for her daughter, and that she only encourages frederick schiller's attentions, because the poet's homage makes the beautiful young lady appear all the more desirable in the eyes of her other suitors." "an infernal speculation, truly!" said schiller, with derisive laughter. "but where are the proofs? until they are furnished, i must be permitted to doubt. i attach no importance whatever to the tattle of the good city of dresden; to the malicious suppositions and remarks of persons with whom i am but slightly acquainted, i am also quite indifferent. but who are the _friends_ who believe in this fable, and who have commissioned you to relate it to me? at least, give me the name of one of them." "i will at least give you the name of a lady friend," said göschen, sadly; "her name is sophie albrecht, my wife's sister." schiller turned hastily to his friends, and his countenance now wore an alarmed expression. "sophie albrecht!" said he, "the sensitive artist--she in whose house i first saw marie. is it possible that she can have uttered so unworthy a suspicion?" "she it was who charged me to warn you," replied göschen, with a sigh. "for this very reason, that you first met madame von arnim and her daughter in her house, does she consider it her duty to warn you and show you the abyss at your feet. at this first interview, she noticed with alarm how deep an impression the rare beauty of miss von arnim made on you, and how you afterwards ran blindly into the net which the old spider, the speculative mother, had set for you. this madame von arnim is the widow of a saxon officer, who left her nothing but his name and his debts. she lives on a small pension given her by the king, and has, it seems, obtained a few thousand dollars from some rich relative; with this sum she has come to dresden, where she proposes to carry out her speculation--that is, to keep house here for some little time, and to entertain society, and, above all, rich young cavaliers, among whom she hopes to find an eligible suitor for her daughter. this at least is no calumny, but madame von arnim very naively admitted as much to my sister-in-law, sophie albrecht, calling her attention to the droll circumstance, that the first candidate who presented himself was no other than a poor poet, who could offer her daughter neither rank, title, nor fortune. when sophie reminded her that frederick schiller could give her daughter the high rank and title of a poet, and adorn her brow with the diamond crown of immortal renown, the sagacious lady shrugged her shoulders, and remarked that a crown of real diamonds would be far more acceptable, and that she had far rather see her daughter crowned with the coronet of a countess than with the most radiant poet's crown conceivable. and she already had the prospect of obtaining such a one for her daughter; the poet's admiration for her beautiful daughter had already made her quite a celebrity." "you are still speaking of the mother, and of the mother only," murmured schiller. "i know that this woman is sordid, and that she would, at any time, sell her daughter for wealth and rank, although purchased with her child's happiness. but what do i care for the mother! speak to me of the daughter, for she it is whom i love--she is my hope, my future." "my poor friend," sighed körner, as he stepped forward and laid his hand on schiller's shoulder. this touch and these words of sympathy startled schiller. "do not lament over me, but make your accusations," cried schiller, and he shook his golden lion's mane angrily. "speak, what charges can you prefer against marie von arnim? but i already know what your reply would be. you would say that she has been infected by the pitiful worldly wisdom of her scheming mother, and that i am nothing more to her than the ornament with which she adorns herself for another suitor." "you have said so, frederick schiller, and it is so," replied körner, in a low voice. "yes, the worldly-wise and scheming mother has achieved the victory over her nobler daughter, and, although her heart may suffer, she will nevertheless follow the teachings of her mother, and make a speculation of your love." "that is not true, that is calumny!" cried schiller, violently. "no, no, i do not believe you! say what you please of the mother, but do not defile her innocent daughter with such vile, unsubstantiated calumny!" "what proofs do you demand?" asked göschen, shrugging his shoulders. "i repeated to you what madam von arnim told sophie albrecht, namely, that a rich suitor had already been found for her daughter." "yes, that the mother had found one. but who told you that the daughter would accept him; that marie was a party to this disgraceful intrigue?" "of that you can certainly best assure yourself," said körner, slowly. "how can i do that?" asked schiller, shuddering slightly. "does not miss marie permit you to visit her in the evening?" "yes, she does." "only when you see a light at the window of her chamber--the signal agreed upon between you--only then you are not permitted to come. is it not so?" "yes, it is so, and that you may well know, as i told you of it myself. when marie places a light at that window it is a sign that begs me not to come, because then only the intimate family circle is assembled, to which i certainly do not as yet belong." "you can, perhaps, assure yourself whether the young lady was strictly accurate in her statement. you intend paying her a visit this evening, do you not?" "yes, i do," cried schiller, joyfully, "and i will fall down on my knees before her, and mentally beg her pardon for the unjust suspicions which have been uttered concerning her." "i do not believe that she will receive you to-day," said körner, in a low voice. "this so-called family circle will have assembled again; in all probability you will see a light in the designated window!" "why do you believe that?" "well, because i happened to converse with several young officers to-day, who are invited to madam von arnim's for this evening. they asked if they might not, at last, hope to meet you there, regretting, as madam von arnim had told them, that your bashfulness and misanthropy made it impossible for you to appear in strange society. i denied this, of course, and assured them that madam von arnim had only been jesting; but they said her daughter had also often told them that frederick schiller was very diffident, and always avoided the larger social gatherings. 'if that were not the case,' said these young gentlemen, 'schiller would certainly appear at madam von arnim's the dansante this evening, that is, unless the feelings awakened in his bosom by the presence of count kunheim might be of too disagreeable a nature.'" schiller shuddered, and a dark cloud gathered on his brow. "who is this count kunheim?" "i asked them this question also, and the young officers replied that count kunheim was the wealthy owner of a large landed estate in prussia, who had intended remaining a few days in dresden in passing through the city on his way to the baths of teplitz. he had, however, made the acquaintance of miss von arnim at a party, and had been so captivated by her grace and beauty that he had now sojourned here for weeks, and was a daily visitor at madam von arnim's house." "and she never even mentioned his name," murmured schiller, with trembling lips, the cold perspiration standing on his forehead in great drops. "no, she told you nothing about him," repeated körner. "and this evening count kunheim will be with her again, while the little taper will burn for you at the window, announcing that the impenetrable family circle has once more closed around the fair maid and her mother." "if that were true--oh, my god, if that were true!" cried schiller, looking wildly around him, his breast heaving with agitation. "if this beautiful, this divine being could really have the cruel courage to--" he had not the courage to pronounce the bitter word which made his soul shudder, but covered his face with his hands, and stood immovable for a long time, wrestling with his grief and anguish. his two friends did not disturb him with any attempts at consolation. they understood the poet well; they knew that his heart was firm, although easily moved. they knew that after frederick schiller had wept and lamented like a child, he would once more be the strong, courageous man, ready to look sorrow boldly in the face. and now but a short time elapsed before the manly breast had regained sufficient strength to bear the burden of its grief. schiller withdrew his hands from his face, threw his head back proudly, and shook his golden mane. "you are right, all doubt must be removed," said he; "i will see if the light has been placed at the window!" he looked at his large silver watch--a present from his father. its old-fashioned form, and the plain hair-guard with which it was provided, instead of a gold chain, made it any thing but an appropriate ornament for a suitor of marie von arnim. "it is eight o'clock," said he--"that is, the hour of reprieve or of execution has come. go, my friends, i will dress myself, and then--" "but will you not permit us to accompany you to the house?" asked körner. "will you not permit your friends to remain at your side, to console you when the sad conviction dawns on your mind, or to witness your triumph, if it appears (what i sincerely hope may be the case) that we have been misinformed?" schiller shook his head. "no," said he, solemnly, "there are great moments in which man can only subdue the demons when he is entirely alone, and battles against them with his own strength of soul. for me, such a moment is at hand; pray leave me, my friends!" chapter ii. gilded poverty. the chandelier in the large reception-room had been already lighted; and in the adjoining room, the door of which was thrown open, the servant hired for the occasion was occupied in lighting the candles in the plated candlesticks, while at a side table a second servant was busily engaged in arranging the cups and saucers, and providing each with a spoon; but he now discontinued his work, and turned to the elderly lady, who stood at his side, and was endeavoring to cut a moderately-sized cake into the thinnest possible slices. "my lady," said the servant, humbly, "ten spoons are still wanting. will you be kind enough to give them to me?" "ah, it is true," replied the lady, "i have only given you the dozen we have in daily use, and must fetch the others from the closet. you shall have them directly." "my lady," remarked the first servant, "there are not candles enough. each of the branched candlesticks requires six candles, and i have only six in all." "then you will have to double the number by cutting them in two," rejoined her ladyship, who was counting the slices of cake, to see if she had not already cut a sufficient number. "thirty-three," she murmured, letting her finger rest on the last slice. "that ought to be enough. there will be twenty persons, and many of them will not take cake a second time. a good piece will be left for to-morrow, and we can invite schiller to breakfast with us on the remainder." at this moment, a red-faced maid, whose attire was far from being tidy, appeared at a side door. "my lady," said she, "i have just been to the grocer's to get the butter and sugar, but he would not let me have any." "he wouldn't let you have any?" repeated madame von arnim. "what do you mean?" "my lady," continued the cook, in a whispering voice, and with downcast eyes, "the grocer said he would furnish nothing more until you paid his bill." "he is an insolent fellow, from whom you must buy nothing more, lisette," cried madame von arnim, very angrily. "i will pay this impertinent fellow to-morrow morning, when i have had my money changed, but my custom i withdraw from him forever. i wish you to understand, lisette, in the future you are to buy nothing whatever from this man. go to the new grocer on the corner of market square, give him my compliments, and tell him that i have heard his wares so highly praised that i intend to give him my patronage. he is to keep an account of all i purchase, and i will settle with him at the end of each month." "my lady," said the cook, "as i have to go out again, anyhow, wouldn't it be better for me to run over to the game dealers, in wilsdruffer street, and buy another turkey? one will certainly not be enough, my lady." "but, lisette," rejoined her ladyship, angrily, "what nonsense is this? when we talked over the supper together you said yourself that one turkey would be quite sufficient." "yes, my lady, but you then said that only twelve persons were to be invited, and now there are twenty!" "that makes no difference, whatever, lisette! what will well satisfy twelve, will satisfy twenty; moreover, it is not necessary that they should be exactly satisfied. i was invited to a supper, a few evenings since, where they had nothing but a roast turkey, and a pie afterwards. there were twenty-two persons, and although each plate was provided with a respectable piece of the roast, i distinctly observed that half of the turkey was left over. go, therefore, and get the butter and sugar, but one turkey is entirely sufficient.--every thing depends, however, on the carving," continued her ladyship, when the cook had taken her departure, "and i charge you, leonhard, to make the carving-knife very sharp, and to cut the slices as thin and delicate as possible. nothing is more vulgar than to serve up great thick pieces of meat. it makes it look as if one was not in good society, but in some restaurant where people go to eat all they desire." "my lady knows what my performances are in that line," said the elder servant, simpering; "my lady has tried me before. without boasting, i can make the impossible, possible. for instance, i carved yesterday, at countess von versen's, for a company of twenty-four people, and as a roast, a single hare, but i cut it into pieces that gladdened the heart. i divided the back into as many pieces as there were joints. eighteen joints made eighteen pieces, i divided the quarters into twenty pieces, making in all thirty-eight, and so much still remained that my lady, the countess, afterward remarked that she would perhaps have another little party this evening, and gave me two groschens extra for my services." "carve the turkey so that half of it shall remain," said her ladyship, with dignity, "and i will also give you two groschens extra." the servant smiled faintly and bowed in acknowledgment of this magnanimous offer. he then turned to the table at which the young servant was occupied in folding up the napkins into graceful figures. "here are three bottles of white wine, my lady," said leonhard, thoughtfully. "i very much fear that it will not go round twice, even if i fill the glasses only half full." "unfortunately i have no further supply of this variety," said her ladyship, with dignity, "it will therefore be better to take a lighter wine, of which i have several varieties in my pantry. i will take these three bottles back and bring you others." with a bold grasp she seized them and vanished through the side door. "do you know what her ladyship is now doing?" asked the experienced servant, leonhard, his mouth expanded into a broad grin, as he danced through the room in his pumps, and placed the chairs in position. "she has gone after a lighter wine," replied the younger and inexperienced, who, with commendable zeal, was at this moment transforming the peak of a napkin into a swan's neck. "after a lighter wine," repeated leonhard, derisively. "that is, she is on her way to the pantry with her three bottles of wine, a pitcher of water, a funnel, and an empty bottle. when she enters the pantry she will lock the door, and when she opens the door and marches forth, she will have four full bottles instead of three, and only the pitcher will be empty." the other servant looked up in dismay, heedless of the fact that his swan's neck was collapsing into an ordinary napkin again. "mr. leonhard, do you mean to say that her ladyship is diluting the wine with water?" "young man, that is not called diluting, but simply 'baptizing,' and, indeed, it is very appropriate that, in christian society, where every body has been baptized, the wine should also receive baptism. bear this in mind, my successor." "your successor? how so, your successor?" asked the other, eagerly, as he pushed a piece of bread under a napkin, which he had just converted into a melon. "do you propose to retire to private life, and resign your custom to me, mr. leonhard?" "such custom as this, willingly," growled leonhard, "that is, when i have received my money--when her ladyship pays the last penny she owes me!" "then she has not paid you for your services?" said the younger, in a faint voice. "she has been in my debt since i first served her; she owes me for four dinners and eight soirées. she promised to pay each time, and has never kept her word; and i would certainly have discontinued coming, long ago, if i had not known that my money would then certainly be lost. as it is, i now and then receive a paltry instalment of a few groschens. to-day," he continued, "she went so far as to promise me two groschens extra. promised! yes, but will she keep her word? and it is very evident to me what the end of all this is to be. her ladyship wishes to be rid of me; and i am to be set aside, little by little, and by you, my friend. to-day, we are to wait on the table together; but the next time she drums a company of matrimonial candidates together, you alone will be summoned. therefore, i call you my successor. i hope you will profit by my example. it is a fearful thing to say, but nevertheless true, i stand before you as a living example of how her ladyship cheats a noble servant out of his well-earned wages. but patience, patience! i will not leave this field of my renown without having at least avenged myself! i intend to beg her ladyship to pay me; and if she refuses to do so, i will exercise vengeance, twofold, fearful vengeance. before the company assembles, i will be so awkward as to fall down and break the four bottles of baptized wine--before the company is assembled, because if i did it afterwards, the guests would hear the crash, and know that she had had wine; but if i do it beforehand, nobody will believe that i broke the bottles." "that is a splendid idea," observed the younger servant, grinning. "i will bear this in mind, and follow your example." "i told you i was a living example, my successor," said leonhard, impressively. "you can learn of me how to suffer, and how to avenge your wrongs." "but you spoke of twofold vengeance. in what will your second act of vengeance consist?" "the second act of vengeance will be this: in spite of the promised--mark the words of your unfortunate living example--in spite of the promised two groschens, i will not cut the unhappy turkey (which, to judge by the length of her spurs, must have been torn from her family as an aged grandmother) into little, transparent slices, leaving half of it for the next day; but i will cut the whole turkey into pieces, and such great thick pieces, that it will not go round once, and nothing but the neck and drumsticks will be left when her ladyship's turn comes. bear this in mind for the future, my successor! i am now going to her ladyship with a flag of truce before the battle. if she rejects the conditions on which i consent to make peace, the result will be made known to you by its crashing consequences. i am now going, my successor; and i repeat it, for the last time, i am your living example!" gravely nodding his well-dressed and powdered head, the servant glided through the room on his inaudible dancing-shoes, and vanished through the side door, which opened into a small room, connected with the kitchen by a passage. her ladyship was neither in this room nor in the kitchen, but, as leonhard had prophesied, had repaired to the pantry and locked herself in. the living example smiled triumphantly, and knocked gently at the door. "what is it?" asked her ladyship from within. "who knocks?" "only leonhard, my lady, who has come after the four bottles of wine." "you shall have them directly," replied his mistress; and leonhard, whose ear was applied to the keyhole, heard for a moment a sound as of water gurgling through a funnel. then all was still, and he hurriedly withdrew from the keyhole. the door was now opened, and madame von arnim looked out. "come in and take the wine; there it stands." leonhard danced up the two steps and into the pantry, and laid hold of the bottles, two in each hand. "and now, my lady," said he, bowing profoundly, and waving his arms slowly to and fro with the bottles, like a juggler who first throws himself into the proper position before beginning his performances; "and now, my lady, i beg that you will graciously accord your humble servant a few moments' conversation." her ladyship inclined her head haughtily. "speak, leonhard, but be brief; my company will soon arrive." the younger servant was still at work preparing for the supper; and, while so engaged, was at the same time reflecting on the dangers and uncertainties of life, and particularly on those attending a career so open to the caprices of fortune as that of a valet de place. suddenly the silence was broken by a loud crash; and the servant rushed to the side door to listen. he could now distinctly hear the angry, scolding voice of her ladyship, and the humble, apologetic murmurs of the cunning leonhard. "yes," said the younger servant, grinning with delight, "he has broken the four bottles of wine! consequently," he quickly added, his voice subdued to a low murmur, "her ladyship has not paid him, and will probably not pay me either! that is sad, for i bought a pair of new cotton gloves especially for this occasion," said he, surveying his hands. no, her ladyship had not paid leonhard; as usual, she had endeavored to console him with promises for the future, and the servant had taken his revenge. with unspeakable satisfaction, he was now engaged in picking up the fragments of glass which covered the floor, perfectly indifferent to the volleys of wrath which her ladyship thundered down upon him from the threshold of the pantry. "what am i to do now? what can i do?" asked his mistress, finally. "to give a supper without wine is impossible!" having cleared the wreck away, leonhard now arose. "my lady," said he, with an air of profound deference, "i deeply regret this unfortunate occurrence, and i humbly beg you to deduct the value of these four bottles of wine when you pay me my wages for the four dinners and eight soirées, not including to-day's!" "that i will do, as a matter of course," rejoined her ladyship; "but what am i to do now!" "i take the liberty of making a suggestion," murmured the living example, submissively. "in the first instance, your ladyship took from me the three bottles of strong wine, giving me four bottles of a lighter variety instead. now, as i have had the misfortune to break these four bottles, how would it do to fall back on the original three bottles of strong wine? as i pour out the wine in the pantry, i could baptize it a little, and add some water to each glass. what does your ladyship think of this plan?" her only reply was an annihilating glance, which leonhard received with an air of perfect composure, as her ladyship rustled past him and descended into the kitchen. chapter iii. marie von arnim. with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes her ladyship passed on, not to the parlor, but through a side door and into a small chamber. it was a plainly-furnished bedroom. it contained two uncurtained beds and a bureau, which stood in front of the only window through which but little light penetrated the room from the narrow side street into which it opened. a young girl of extraordinary beauty was sitting before the bureau, on which a single candle burned. her small, lovely oval head was that of a venus; the tall, slender and graceful figure, that of a juno. in conformity with the fashion of that day, her dark-brown and shining hair was arranged in hundreds of little curls, encompassed with a golden band, which terminated on her forehead in a serpent's head. her eyes--the large blue eyes which contrasted so wondrously with the dark hair--were gazing at the mirror. a sad smile played about her beautiful, crimson lips, as she looked at the reflection of her own figure, at the lovely, rosy countenance, the full and rounded shoulders, the arms of dazzling whiteness, and at the tapering waist, brought out to great advantage by the closely-fitting blue silk bodice. she wore no ornament but the golden band in her hair; her jewels were her youth and her beauty; the tears which trembled on her eyelashes were more precious gems than were ever mined for in the depths of the earth, for these came unsought from the depths of her heart. she was so completely absorbed in her sadly-sweet dreams that her mother's entrance was unobserved; and not until now, when her mother stood at her side, was she awakened from her reverie. "what do you wish, mamma?" she asked quickly. "have our guests arrived? am i to go down?" she was about to rise, but her mother motioned her back with an imperious gesture. "remain where you are, no one has come yet. lisette will announce the arrivals as they come. i desire to speak with you." her daughter sighed, folded her hands on her lap, and let her head fall on her bosom in mute resignation. "i think i know what you wish to speak about, mother," she whispered. "that i can readily believe, nor is it at all surprising that you should," said her corpulent ladyship, as she seated herself at her daughter's side. "i wish to speak to you of our future and of your duties. this state of things can continue no longer! i can no longer endure this life of plated poverty. i must no longer be exposed to the humiliations i am compelled to suffer at the hands of shoemakers and tailors, grocers and servants, and the host of others who are dunning me for a few paltry groschens. my creditors have compelled me to run the gantlet again to-day, and i have been so annoyed and harassed that i feel like crying." "poor mother!" sighed marie. "ah, why did we not remain in quiet, little pillnitz, where we were doing so well, where our modest means were sufficient for our support, and where we were not compelled to gild and burnish our poverty!" "for the hundredth time i will tell you why we did so," rejoined her mother, impatiently. "i left pillnitz, and brought you to dresden, because in pillnitz there were only pensioned revenue officials, invalid officers, and a few gray-headed lawyers and judges, but no young gentlemen, and, least of all, no marriageable, wealthy gentlemen, for you." "for me, mamma? have i ever expressed any longing to be married?" "perhaps not, for you are a simple-minded, foolish dreamer; but i desired it. i recognized the necessity of making a wealthy and a suitable match for you." "if you had recognized this necessity, mother," cried marie, bursting into tears, "it was very cruel of you to let any other than such wealthy, marriageable gentlemen come to our house. if this is really a matrimonial bureau, we should have permitted only those to register themselves who possessed the necessary qualifications." "i see you are becoming quite sarcastic and bitter," said her ladyship, shrugging her shoulders. "you have profited somewhat by your interview with schiller." marie drew back with a quick, convulsive movement, and a sigh escaped her lips. "you should not have mentioned the name of this noble man at such a time, at a time when i am again compelled to deceive him." "enough of this sentimentalism, marie," rejoined her mother. "monsieur schiller is a very pleasant and agreeable man; he may be a great poet besides, but a suitable husband for you, he is not! he can scarcely earn enough for his own support, and his clothing is not respectable. how did he look when he came here yesterday? you will admit that it is impossible to bring him into the society of rich cavaliers and elegant officers, in his disorderly costume." "he looked just as he did when we first met him at madame albrecht's, and yet you then begged him to visit us. and you it was who afterwards encouraged his visits." "nor do i regret having done so," remarked madame von arnim, quietly. "councillor schiller is a man of high respectability and eminence. our intimacy with him is of great advantage to us. it proves to the world that we are wise and intellectual ourselves, for otherwise, so intellectual a man would not have selected us as associates. believe me, this intimacy has greatly advanced our social position; it has called great attention to us, and placed your youth and beauty in the proper light. gentlemen of the highest standing and greatest wealth now consider it a great honor to be permitted to visit at our house, since they know that frederick schiller adores you, each one of them is anxious to achieve the renown of supplanting the celebrated poet in your favor and making you his wife. you have a great many suitors, marie, and you owe them, in a great measure, to your intimacy with schiller." "but that is wrong, that is criminal!" cried marie, bursting into tears. "why so?" rejoined madame von arnim, laughing. "he was the alluring bait we used to catch our gold-fishes with; i can see nothing criminal in that. why was this wise man foolish enough to fall in love with you, as he must have known that a union between you and him is impossible?" "why impossible?" asked marie, quickly; she dried her eyes, and looked defiantly into her mother's complacent, smiling countenance. "why impossible? because you are of too good, too noble a family to ally yourself with a man who is not a nobleman, who has no preëminent rank." "mother, frederick schiller's rank is higher and more illustrious than that of counts and barons. there are hundreds of princes, counts, and barons, in the german empire, and but one poet, frederick schiller. happy and highly honored throughout all germany will the woman be to whom frederick schiller gives his name, whom he makes his wife." "well, that may be," said madame von arnim, contemptuously, "but one thing is certain, and that is, that you will never be this woman." "and why not?" asked marie, passionately. "if schiller really loves me, and offers me his hand, why shall i not accept it? because he is not wealthy? he will know how to convert the treasures of his intellect into millions of money. until then i can practice economy. my wants are few, and you well know, mother, that i can make a little go a long way. then, permit me to be happy in my own way. i will tell you the whole truth, mother, i love frederick schiller, and, if he asks me to be his wife, i shall be the happiest of god's creatures." "nonsense!" rejoined her ladyship. "you will be kind enough to give up all thought of this foolish love, and make up your mind to marry the noble and wealthy gentleman selected for you by your mother." "mother," cried marie, imploringly, "do not be so cruel, have pity on me! do not compel me to destroy my own happiness, for i tell you that i can only be happy at schiller's side." "and why should you be happy?" asked her mother, coldly. "what right have you to happiness above the rest of mankind? do you suppose i am happy? _i_ have never been, and have never imagined i had a _right_ to be. life is a pretty hard nut; in attempting to crack it we break our teeth, and when we at last succeed, we find that it is empty, after all. whether we are personally happy or not, is a matter of small moment--the one thing is to do our duty to others; and your duty it is, to repay your mother for her sacrifices for yourself and your brother. at your father's death you were both young children, and of course his lieutenant's paltry pension was not sufficient for our support. but i could not let you starve, and it was my duty to give you an education that would qualify you to take the position in society to which your rank entitles you. i did not hesitate for a moment, and, although i was still young, and might have made a second and an advantageous marriage, i gave up all such plans, sold my handsome and costly trousseau, and retired with you to the little town of pillnitz, where i devoted myself wholly to the education of my children. you know that this is so, do you not?" "i do," replied marie, as she grasped her mother's hand and carried it to her lips. "you sacrificed yourself for your children, and they are indebted to you for all that they are." "unfortunately, that is not a great deal as yet," said her mother. "your brother is only a poor second-lieutenant, whose salary is not sufficient for his support, and you are only an indigent young lady of noble birth, who must either become a governess or marry a fortune. my means are now entirely exhausted. little by little i have sold all the valuables i possessed, my diamonds, my jewelry, and my silver-ware. i finally parted with my last jewel, the necklace inherited from my mother, in order that we might live in dresden a year on the proceeds. but the year is almost at an end, and my money also. we cannot maintain ourselves here more than four weeks longer, and then the artistic structure of our social position will crumble over our heads, and all will be over. you will be compelled to earn your own bread, your poor brother will be reduced to the greatest extremities, and your mother will have to take up her abode in a debtors' prison, as, after her well-considered plans have failed, she will have no means to meet the demands of her numerous creditors. all this will be your work, the responsibility rests with you." "o my god, have pity on me!" sobbed marie. "show me the result of all this trouble!" "the result is, governess or countess," said madam von arnim, quietly. "in your weakness you may suppose there could be a third alternative, that of becoming councillor schiller's wife. yet i will never give my consent to such a misalliance; a misalliance is only excusable when gilded over with extraordinary wealth. but councillor schiller is poor, and will always remain poor; he is an idealist, and not a practical man. i should like to know what advantage i should derive from having the poet schiller as a son-in-law. can he compensate me for my sacrifices? can he replace my jewels, my trousseau, and my silver-ware? you know that he cannot, and never will be able to do so. it is your sacred and imperative duty to compensate and reward me for the sacrifices which i have made for you, and to secure to me in my old age the comfortable existence of which care and solicitude for yourself and your brother have hitherto deprived me. you will marry the rich count kunheim. you will receive his attentions in such a manner as to encourage him to offer you his hand, which you will then accept. i command you to do so!" "but, mother, this is impossible, i do not love the count, i cannot marry him! have pity on me, mother!" she sank down on her knees, and raised her hands imploringly. "i repeat it; i love frederick schiller!" "well, then, love frederick schiller, if you will," said her ladyship, with a shrug of her shoulders, "but marry count kunheim. it is given to no woman to marry the object of her first love, to make the ideal of her heart her husband. you will only share the common lot of woman; you will have to renounce your first love and make a sensible marriage. i can tell you, however, for your consolation, that marriages of the latter sort generally prove much happier in the sequel than these moneyless love-marriages. when hunger stalks in at the door love flies out at the window. on the other hand, the most lovelorn and desolate heart will finally recover, when given a daily airing in a carriage-and-four. drive in your carriage, and accord me a seat in it; i am weary. i have been travelling life-long on the stony streets, and my feet are wounded! marie, i entreat you, my child, take pity on the poor mother, who has suffered so much, take pity on the brother, who must give up his career in life, unless we can give him some assistance. he would be compelled to leave the army, and perhaps his only resource would be to hire himself out as a copyist to some lawyer, in order to earn a subsistence. marie, dear marie, i entreat you, take pity on your family! our happiness is in your hands!" she made no reply, she was still on her knees, had covered her countenance with her hands, and was weeping bitterly. her mother gazed down upon her without an emotion of pity, her broad, fleshy face and little gray eyes expressed no sympathy whatever. "be reasonable, marie," said her ladyship, after a short interval, "consider the happiness of your mother and brother, rather than the momentary caprice of your heart. cast aside these dreams, this sensitiveness, and seek your own happiness in that of your family." "it shall be as you say," said marie, rising slowly from her knees. "i will sacrifice my own happiness for your sake, but i make one condition." "and that is--?" "that all these little mysteries and intrigues be discontinued, and schiller be told the whole truth. no more signs are to be given requesting him not to come; he is no longer to be made use of and yet denied at the same time. he must not be permitted to hope that his addresses will be accepted; he must learn that they will be rejected. if he should then still desire to visit us, our door must be open to him at all times, and the light must never be placed in my window again to warn him off. this is my condition. accept it, and i am ready to cover my face with a mask, and play the rôle which the necessities of life compel me to assume." "i will accept it," replied madame von arnim, "although i consider it very impolitic. schiller's nature is violent, easily excited, and deficient in that aristocratic cultivation which represses all the movements of natural impulse. for instance, if he should come here this evening, a very disagreeable scene might ensue; he would be capable of reproaching me or yourself quite regardless of the presence of others." "and he could reproach us with justice," sighed marie, "i am resolved rather to bear his anger than to deceive him any longer." "but i am not," rejoined her ladyship, "i have a perfect horror of these _scènes dramatiques_. but you will have it so, you made it your condition, and nothing remains for me but to accept it. and now, be discreet, be sensible; induce count kunheim to declare himself this evening, if possible, in order that schiller may hear of your betrothal as a _fait accompli_." "i will do your bidding," said marie, with a sad and yet proud smile. "give yourself no further care, the sweet dream is at end, i have awakened. it is a sad awakening, and i will have to weep a great deal, but my tears shall not accuse you; if i am unhappy, i will not say that you were the cause of my unhappiness. it was god's will, this shall be my consolation; god wills it and i submit!" "and you do well, and will live to thank me for having prevented you from becoming the wife of a poor german poet. and now, that we have disposed of this disagreeable affair, come to my heart, my daughter, and give me a kiss of reconciliation." but, instead of throwing herself into her mother's extended arms, marie drew back. "no," said she, "do not kiss me now, mother; we could only exchange a judas kiss. come, give me your hand, mother, and let us go to the parlor to receive our guests. let us, however, first extinguish this candle." "yes, we will, or rather i will carry it with me to the kitchen, where a little more light would not be amiss," said her ladyship, taking the candle from the bureau. "go to the parlor, my daughter, and receive our guests, i must first go to the kitchen to see if every thing is in order." they both left the chamber; marie repaired to the parlor, and her mother passed on to the kitchen, to see if the new grocer had furnished the butter and sugar. to her great relief, she learned that he had, and, elated by this success, she determined to send to the accommodating grocer for a few bottles of wine to replace the broken ones. nothing more was now wanting for the completion of her soirée! she hastily gave the cook a few instructions, and then returned to the bedchamber with the candle. "he must not come this evening," said her ladyship to herself; "he might frustrate the whole plan, for marie is transformed into another being in his presence, and count kunheim would not fail to observe that she did not love him. no, the light must be burning--schiller must be kept away. as the rich countess kunheim, marie will some day thank me for not having kept my promise. yes, she certainly will!" she hastened forward to the window and placed the light in a conspicuous place. but what was that! at this moment, a loud peal of laughter resounded in the narrow street beneath the window--a peal of laughter that was so bitter, so mocking, that it startled even her ladyship's fearless heart; it seemed almost like a threat. her ladyship now repaired to the parlor to receive her guests, who had begun to arrive, and this disagreeable sensation was soon forgotten. madame von arnim greeted each one of her guests with the same stereotyped smile--the same polite phrases. she quietly conducted the few old ladies, who had been invited to give dignity to the occasion, into the adjoining boudoir, and recruited an invalid major to play whist with them. and now, after having satisfactorily disposed of these guests, and rendered their gossiping tongues harmless, she returned to the parlor, and displayed to the assembled officers and cavaliers the smiling, pleasant countenance of a lady who is ready to become a loving and tender mother-in-law.--for propriety's sake, a few young women had also been invited, having small pretensions to good looks, and of modest attire; such ladies as are commonly termed friends, and who are nothing more than the setting which gives additional lustre to the gem. to entertain these friends was the mission of the second-lieutenants, while the officers of higher rank and the wealthy cavaliers congregated around the goddess of their adoration--the lovely marie von arnim. she was now once more the radiant beauty; her countenance was rosy and joyous, her blue eyes were bright and clear, and bore no evidence of the tears which had flowed back to her heart. a smile played about her rosy lips, and merry, jesting words escaped the mouth which but now had uttered wails and lamentations. count ehrhard von kunheim was completely captivated by her grace and beauty; his gaze was fastened immovably on her lovely countenance. the homage she received from all sides was a flattering tribute to the lady of his choice--the lady he now firmly resolved to make his bride. it was very pleasant to see his future wife the object of so much adoration. he would gladly have seen the whole world at her feet, for then his triumph would have been so much greater in seeing himself favored above all the world. he gazed proudly at the array of rank by which his love was surrounded; the expressions of admiration were sweet music in his ear. he mentally determined to address her this very evening; in a few brief hours it would be in his power to cry out to his rivals: "the lovely marie von arnim is mine! she is my bride!" how great, how glorious a triumph would that be! it was a pity that _he_ was not present! to have carried off this prize before him would have crowned his triumph. "miss marie," asked the count, interrupting the joyous conversation which she was carrying on with several officers, "you have graciously promised to make me acquainted with your protégé, mr. schiller? is he likely to come this evening?" the smile faded from her lips, the lustre of her eyes was dimmed, and she looked anxiously around, as if seeking help. her eyes met the keen, threatening glance of her mother, who at once came forward to her assistance; she felt that escape was no longer possible--the hand of fate had fallen upon her. "i fear councillor schiller is not coming," said her ladyship, in her complacent manner. "no, he is not coming," repeated marie, mechanically. regrets, and many praises of the genial poet they so much admired, and whose latest poems were so charming, now resounded from all sides. "it is really a pity that you have never been able to gratify us by producing this celebrated poet," said count kunheim to the beautiful marie. with a forced smile, she replied, "yes, it is really a pity." "and why is he not coming?" asked several gentlemen of madame von arnim. "pray tell us, why is it this councillor only comes when you are alone, and is certain of meeting no company here?" "he avoids mankind, as the owl does the light," replied her ladyship, smiling. "we gave him our solemn promise that we would not receive other visitors when he is with us; we promised, moreover, that we would let him know when we had company in the evening by giving him a signal." "and do you really give him the signal, my lady?" asked count kunheim. "yes, we do," replied marie, in a low voice. "and may i ask in what the signal consists that announces to the man-fearing poet that other mortals have approached his goddess?" "it is no secret," said madame von arnim. "i will tell you, count. the signal is a lighted candle placed at the window of our dressing-room. when he sees this light, he beats a retreat, and turns his back on our house." "will he come if no light is burning for him?" inquired count kunheim, quickly. "he will," replied madame von arnim, laughing. "therefore, if no light should burn in the window, he would come this evening?" "certainly he would. he vows that he only lives and thinks when in my daughter's presence; and he would undoubtedly have come this evening if i had not given him the signal." "but, mother," exclaimed marie, "you are mistaken; we did not give the signal to-day." "then, as you gave no signal, he has simply declined to avail himself of your invitation for this evening," remarked count kunheim. "no, no, count, he has not come, because i gave the signal." "not so, my lady," observed a cold, quiet voice behind her; "true, you gave the signal, but he has come nevertheless." "schiller!" exclaimed marie, turning pale, and yet she smiled and her eyes sparkled. she was on the point of hastening forward with extended hands to meet him, but her mother had already interposed her colossal figure between her and the poet, and was gazing at him defiantly, as if to signify her readiness to take up the gauntlet if he should meditate warfare. "you are heartily welcome, councillor schiller," said she, in dulcet tones. "we feel highly honored and are particularly pleased to have you join us at last on an evening when we have company. these gentlemen will all be delighted to make your acquaintance. we were speaking of you when you entered, and all were regretting that you were not here, and--" "of that i am aware," said schiller, interrupting her. "i had been standing in the doorway for some time, but you were conversing so eagerly that no one noticed my presence. i saw and heard all." schiller's voice trembled while uttering these words, and his countenance was deathly pale. "then you heard us all express an ardent desire to make your acquaintance," said count kunheim, stepping forward. "i esteem myself highly fortunate in being able to gratify this desire. permit me to introduce myself. i am count von kunheim." schiller did not seem to observe the count's extended hand, and bowed stiffly; he then looked over toward the window-niche, to which marie had withdrawn, and where she stood trembling, her heart throbbing wildly. how angry, reproachful, and contemptuous, was the glance he fastened on her countenance! but his lips were mute, and as he now withdrew his gaze, he erected his head proudly, and a derisive smile quivered on his thin, compressed lips. with this smile he turned to the gentlemen again, and greeted them with a haughty inclination of his head, like a king who is receiving the homage of his subjects. "you expressed a desire to see me, gentlemen, i am here. the conversation which i overheard, compelled me to show myself for a moment, in order to correct a little error imparted to you by madame von arnim." "an error?" said her ladyship, in some confusion. "really, mr. schiller, i am at a loss to understand exactly your meaning." "i will make myself understood, madame von arnim. you told these gentlemen that i avoided mankind as the owl avoids the light. but this is not the case, and i beg these gentlemen not to credit this statement. i do not avoid mankind, and i do not hate my fellow-creatures, but i love them. i love and revere the human countenance, for the spirit of god is reflected in the human eye. i love my fellow-creatures, and although they have sometimes caused me pain, and rudely awakened me from my dreams of happiness, yet, my faith in humanity is unshaken, and--" "oh, schiller," cried marie, stepping forward from the window-niche, and no longer able to conceal her agitation, "schiller, give me your hand, tell me--" "miss von arnim," said he, interrupting her, "i have nothing to say to you, i only desire to speak to these gentlemen! i do not wish you to consider me a foolish misanthrope, gentlemen, and therefore, i take the liberty of correcting a second erroneous statement made by madame von arnim. she told you that i had exacted of her the promise, to warn me by a signal-light when the ladies were entertaining company, because social intercourse was burdensome and repugnant to me. this is, however, not the case, but exactly the reverse. these ladies, and particularly miss marie von arnim requested me to come here only when the window was dark, and on the other hand never to visit them when i saw a light in the window. miss von arnim--" "schiller," said she, interrupting him, in a loud and trembling voice, and laying her hand on his arm, "schiller, i conjure you, go no further!" "miss von arnim also explained to me why she desired this," continued schiller, as though he had not heard marie's imploring voice, as though he did not feel the pressure of her trembling hand. "miss von arnim told me that on the evenings in which the signal would be given the circle of her mother's nearest relatives would be assembled in the house, in which circle it was impossible to introduce a stranger. gentlemen, it affords me great pleasure to recognize in you the dear cousins and uncles of this young lady, and i congratulate her on her brilliant and exclusive family party. and now permit me to explain why i dared to enter this house, although the light displayed in the window proclaimed the presence of the family." "but there was no light at the window," exclaimed marie, eagerly; "this is an error! i desired that you should come this evening, and on that account it was expressly understood between my mother and myself that no--" "the light was there," said her ladyship, interrupting her; "i had placed it there! be still, do not interrupt the councillor; he said he had something to explain.--continue, sir! why did you come, although the light was displayed in the window?" "because i wished to know what it really meant," replied schiller, with composure and dignity. "you see, my lady, i am not afraid of the light, and i seek the truth, although i must admit that it is a painful and bitter truth that i have learned to-day. but man must have the courage to look facts in the face, even if it were the head of the medusa. i have seen the truth, and am almost inclined to believe that the eternal gods must have imparted to me some of the strength of perseus, for, as you see, i have not been transformed into stone, but am still suffering. and now that i have corrected her ladyship's errors, i humbly beg pardon for having cast a shadow over the gayety of this assembly. it will certainly be for the last time! farewell, ladies!" he inclined his head slightly, but did not cast a single glance at the lovely marie von arnim; he did not see her faint, and fall into count kunheim's arms, who lifted her tenderly and carried her to the sofa, where he gently deposited his precious burden. nor did he see the friends rush forward to restore the insensible young lady to consciousness with their smelling-bottles and salts. no, frederick schiller observed nothing of all this; he walked through the parlor and antechamber toward the hall-door. near the door stood the 'living example,' looking up with an expression of unspeakable admiration at the tall figure of the poet, who had written his two favorite pieces, "the robbers," and "fiesco." he was so grateful to the poet for having put her ladyship to shame, that he would gladly have knelt down and kissed his feet. "oh, mr. schiller, great mr. schiller," murmured leonhard, hastening forward to open the door, "you are not the only one whom she has deceived. she has deceived me also; i, too, am a wretched victim of her cunning. but only wait, sublime poet, only wait; i will not only avenge myself, but you also, mr. schiller. i will cut the pieces still larger, and the turkey shall not go half around, not half around! i will avenge both myself and schiller!" he did not hear a word of what leonhard had said, for he hurried past him, down the steps, and out into the street. there he stood still for a moment gazing at the lighted windows, until a veil of unbidden tears darkened his vision. the burning tears trickling down his cheeks aroused him. he shook his head angrily, and pressed his clinched hands against his eyes to drive them back; not another tear would, he shed. away! away from this house! away! chapter iv. souls in purgatory. as if pursued by the furies, with uncovered head, his yellow locks fluttering in the wind, he rushed onward through the streets, over the long elbe bridge, past the golden crucifix, which towered in the moonlight, and now along the river bank beneath the brühl terrace, following the river, and listening to the rippling waves, that murmur of peace and eternal rest. the moon threw golden streaks of light on the river, and a long shadow on its bank, the shadow of the poet, who was hurrying on in grief and agony. where? he did not know, he was not conscious that he was walking on the verge of an open grave; he was only instinctively seeking a solitude, a retreat where the ear of man could not hear, nor the eye of man see him. he wished to be alone with his grief, alone in the trying hour when he would be compelled to tear the fair blossom from his heart, and tread it under foot as though it were a poisonous weed. he wished to be alone with the tears which were gushing from his soul, with the cries of agony that escaped his quivering lips--alone in the great and solemn hour when the poet was once more to receive the baptism of tears, that his poetic children, his poems, might be nourished with the blood that flowed from his wounded breast. he had now entered the little wood which at that time skirted the river bank a few hundred yards below the terrace. its darkness and silence was what he had sought, and what he needed. alone! alone with his god and his grief! a loud cry of anguish escaped his breast and must have awakened the slumbering birds. the foliage of the trees was agitated by a plaintive whispering and murmuring, as though the birds were saying to the moonbeams: "here is a man who is suffering, who is wrestling with his agony! console him with your golden rays, good moon; give him of your peace, starry summer eve!" perhaps the moon heard the plaintive appeal of the birds and the spirits of the night, for at this moment it broke forth from the concealing clouds and showed its mild, luminous countenance, and pierced the forest with its golden beams, seeking him who had disturbed the peace of slumbering nature with the agonized cry of his wakeful, tormenting grief. there he lies, stretched out like a corpse, or like one in a trance. but the moon sees that he is not dead, not unconscious, and sadly witnesses the tears trickling down his countenance, and hears his sobs and wails, the wails of the genius suffering after the manner of humanity; and yet the spirit of god dwells in his exalted mind, and will give him strength to overcome this grief. the night sheds a soft light on his tearful countenance, as though it greeted him with a heavenly smile; and the stars stand still and twinkle their greetings to the poet. the melody of the birds is hushed, and they listen in the foliage, as though they understood his lamentations. schiller had now raised his head; the stillness and solitude of the night had cooled the burning fever of his soul. "is it then true, am i destined only to suffer and to be deceived? years roll on and i have not yet enjoyed the golden fruits that life promises to man, the golden fruits of arcadia. my heart was filled with such joyous anticipations, my soul longed for these fruits. although the spring-time of my life has hardly begun, its blossoms have already withered. all is vanity and illusion! falsehood alone can make men happy, truth kills them like god's lightning! i have looked thee in the face again to-day, truth, thou relentless divinity, and my heart burns in pain, and my soul is filled with agony. the poet is a prophet, my present condition proves it; what the poet in me sung, the poor child of humanity now experiences; my sufferings are boundless." he buried his face in his hands, and the moon saw the tears which trickled out from between his fingers, and heard the poet's plaintive, trembling voice break in upon the stillness of the night like the soft tones of an æolian harp: "ich zahle dir in einem andren leben, gieb deine jugend mir! nichts kann ich dir als diese weisung geben. ich nahm die weisung auf das andre leben und meiner jugend freuden gab ich ihr! gieb mir das weib, so theuer deinem herzen! gieb deine laura mir! jenseit des grabes wuchern deine schmerzen! ich riss sie blutend aus dem wunden herzen, ich weinte laut und gab sie ihr!"[31] "and gave--albeit with tears!" repeated schiller once more, and a cry of anguish escaped his breast. "is it then inevitable? is man born only to suffer, and are those right who assert that life is only a vale of sorrow, and not worth enduring?" he seemed to be painfully meditating on this question. nature held its breath, awaiting his answer; even the birds had ceased chirping, and the wind no longer dared to rustle in the tree-tops. in what tones will the æolian harp of the soul respond? what reply will the poet make to the question propounded by the man? he looks up at the bright firmament shedding its peaceful beams upon his head; he looks at the stars, and they smile on him. there is something in him that bids defiance to all sorrow and melancholy. a soft, heavenly, and yet strong voice resounds in his soul like the mysterious manifestation of the divinity itself. he listens to this voice; the pinions of his soul no longer droop; he rises, stretches out his arms towards the moon and the stars, and his soul soars heavenward and revels in the glories of the universe. "no," he exclaimed, in loud and joyous tones, "no, the earth is no vale of sorrow, it is the garden of the almighty. no, life is no bauble to be lightly thrown away; the sufferings life entails must be endured and overcome. give me strength to overcome them, thou indwelling spirit; illumine the darkness of my human soul, thou flame of god, holy poetry! no, it were unworthy the dignity, unworthy the honor of manhood, to bow the head under the yoke of sorrow, and become the slave of melancholy for the sake of a faithless woman. a greeting to you, you golden lights of the heavens! you shall not look down on me with pity, but with proud sympathy! i am a part of the great spirit who created you, am spirit of the spirit of god, am lord of the earth. down with you, sorrows of earth! down with you, scorpions! i will set my foot on your head, and triumph over you. you shall have no power over me. i am a man; who is more so?" and exultantly and triumphantly he once more cried out to the night and the heavens: "i am a man!" it was not the sky which now illumined his countenance, it was the proud smile of victory; the light in his eyes was not the reflection of the stars, but the brave courage of the soul which had elevated itself above the dust of the earth. "the struggle is over, grief is overcome! i greet thee, thou peaceful tranquil night, thou hast applied the healing balsam to my wounded breast: and all pain will soon have vanished!" he turned homeward, and walked rapidly through the wood and along the river bank, which was here and there skirted with clumps of bushes and shrubbery. suddenly he stood still and listened. it seemed to him that he had heard the despairing cry of a human voice behind some bushes, close to the river bank. yes, he had not been mistaken, he could now hear the voice distinctly. schiller slowly and noiselessly approached the clump of bushes from behind which the voice had seemed to proceed; he bent the twigs aside, and, peering through the foliage, listened. he beheld a strange sight. he saw before him the river with its rippling waves, and, on its narrow bank, kneeling in the full moonlight, a human form--a youth whose countenance was pale and emaciated, and whose long black hair fluttered in the breeze. his features were distorted with anguish, and the tears which poured down his hollow cheeks sparkled in the light like diamonds. he was partially undressed, and his coat, hat, and a book, which, to judge from its size and shape, appeared to be a bible, lay at his side on the sand. the youth had raised his bare arms toward heaven, his hands were clasped together convulsively, and in his agony his voice trembled as he uttered these words: "i can no longer endure life. forgive me, o god in heaven, but i cannot! thou knowest what my struggles have been! thou knowest that i have tried to live--tried to bid defiance to the torments which lacerate my soul! thou knowest how many nights i have passed on my knees, entreating thee to send down a ray of mercy on my head, to show me an issue out of this night of despair! but it was not thy will, almighty father! thou hast not taken pity on the poor worm that writhed in the dust, on the beggar who stretched out his hands to thee, imploring alms! then, pardon me at least, and receive me in thy mercy! i am about to return to thee; o god, receive me graciously! and thou, thou hard, cruel, joyless world, thou vale of affliction, a curse upon thee--the curse of a dying mortal who has received nothing but torment at thy hands! farewell, and--" he arose from his knees, and rushed forward with extended arms toward the deep, silent grave that lay there ready to receive him. suddenly a strong hand held him as in a vice, he was drawn back and hurled to the ground at the water's edge. it seemed to him that a giant stood before him--a giant whose golden locks were surrounded by a halo, whose eyes sparkled, and whose countenance glowed with noble anger. "suicide," thundered a mighty voice, "who gives you the right to murder him whom god has created! felon, murderer, fall on your knees in the dust and pray to god for mercy and forgiveness!" "i have prayed to god for weeks and months," murmured the trembling youth, writhing in the dust, and not daring to look up at the luminous apparition that hovered over him like god's avenging angel. "it was all in vain. no ray of light illumined the night of my sufferings. i wish to die, because i can no longer endure life! i flee to death to seek relief from the hunger that has been gnawing at my vitals for four days, and has made of the man a wild animal! i--" his wailing voice was silent, his limbs no longer quivered; when schiller knelt down at his side, he saw that his features were stiffened and that his eyes were widely extended and glassy. schiller laid his ear on the unfortunate man's breast and felt his pulse. his heart was not beating; his pulse no longer throbbed. "it is only a swoon, nothing else; death cannot ensue so quickly unless preceded by spasms. poor unfortunate, forgive me for calling you back to the torment of existence; but we are men, and must not violate the laws of nature. i must awaken you, poor youth!" he stretched out his hands to the river, filled them with water, and poured it on his pale forehead, and, as he still lay motionless, he rubbed his forehead and breast with his hands, and breathed his own breath into his open mouth. slowly life dawned again, a ray of consciousness returned to the glassy eyes, and the trembling lips murmured a low wail, which filled the poet's soul with sadness, and his eyes with tears of sympathy. there lay the image of god, quivering in agony; the most pitiful complaint of the human creature was the anxious cry of the awakening human soul, "i am hungry! i am hungry!" "and i have nothing to allay his hunger with," said schiller, anxiously; "nothing with which to make a man of this animal." "woe is me," groaned the youth, "this torment is fearful! why did you call me back to my sufferings? who gave you the right to forbid me to die?" "who gave you the right to die?" asked schiller, with severity. "hunger," groaned the youth, "hunger, with its scorpion teeth! if you compel me to live, then give me the bread of life! bread! give me bread! see, i beg for bread! i preferred to die rather than beg, but you have conquered me and bowed my head in the dust, and now i am a beggar! give me bread! do not let me starve!" "i will bring you bread," said schiller, mildly. "but, no, you might avail yourself of my absence to accomplish your dark purpose. swear that you will remain here until i return." the unfortunate youth did not reply; when schiller again knelt down at his side, he saw that he was again in a swoon. "when he awakens, i will have returned," murmured schiller. he arose, and ran rapidly to the little inn that stood at the foot of brühls's terrace. to his great joy, a light was still burning in the main room, and, when he entered, several guests were still sitting at the table enjoying their pipes and beer. schiller stepped up to the counter, purchased a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine, and returned with all possible haste to the unfortunate youth, who had resumed consciousness, and was, at the moment of his arrival, painfully endeavoring to raise his head. schiller knelt down, and rested the poor youth's head on his knees. "be patient, my poor friend, i bring relief, i bring bread!" how hastily did his trembling hands clutch the loaf, and how eagerly did they carry it to his mouth! how radiant was his countenance when he had taken a long draught from the bottle which schiller held to his pale lips. the poet turned away, he could not endure this painful sight. sadly and reproachfully he looked upward. "o god, thou hast made thy world so rich! there is enough to provide a bounteous repast for all! the trees are laden with fruits, and man may not pluck them; the bakeries are filled with the bread of life, and man may not take, although he is starving. he sinks down in the death agony while the rich usurer drives by in his splendid equipage, and looks down proudly and contemptuously upon the unhappy man whose only crime is that he is poor. o eternal, divine justice, it is in vain that i seek thee behind the clouds. i look for thee in vain in the palaces of the rich, and in the huts of the poor!" "ah, how refreshing, how delightful was this bread and wine!" sighed the unfortunate youth. "you are my saviour, you have freed me from torment. i thank you! let me kiss this merciful hand!--you will not permit me, you withdraw it? you despise me, the suicide, the coward? you have a right to do so!" "no," said schiller, gently, "i do not despise, i pity you. i also have suffered, i also have felt the scorpion stings of poverty. no, i do not despise you. all men are brothers, and must aid one another. all cares are sisters, and must console one another. speak my brother, tell me, how can i aid you? unburden your bosom to my sister soul, and i will try to console you." "you are an angel-messenger from god," sobbed the young man. "your lips speak the first words of sympathy i have heard for long months. i could bathe your feet in tears of gratitude. yes, my brother, you shall hear the sad history of my life, and then you will perhaps justify, perhaps pardon, the crime i was about to commit. oh, my brother!" schiller seated himself at his side on the river bank, and the pale youth rested his head on the poet's proffered shoulder. a pause ensued. while he who had but just returned from the gates of death, was endeavoring to collect his confused and wandering thoughts, the voice of pity was resounding in the heart of him who had been stronger than his brother in the hour of trial, who had bid defiance to misfortune, and with manly fortitude had overcome grief. his heart was filled with sympathy for his weaker and less courageous brother, who had desired to flee from life because his soul lacked the pinions which had borne the poet aloft, above the dust and misery of earth. "how can he fly to whom the almighty, the omnipresent, has not given the pinions of enthusiasm? he must crawl in the dust, his only thought is the gratification of his animal instincts, and like an animal he must live and perish. for him from whom god withholds this heavenly ray, all is night and darkness--no stars shine for him; it were well he sought safety in the silence of the grave, in a cessation of torment! i thank thee, o god, for the strength thou hast given, for the ray of light thou hast sent down to illumine my dark path in life!" these words did not pass schiller's lips, they were only uttered in the depths of his soul. he looked up at the moon and stars, journeying in unchangeable serenity on their heavenly course. "smile on, smile on! you know nothing of man's sufferings. the eternal laws have marked out your course. why not ours, too? why not man's? why must we wander in the desert of life, seeking happiness, and finding pain only! we conceive ourselves to be godlike, and yet we are no more than the worm that writhes in the dust, and is trodden under foot by the careless passer-by." these were the thoughts that passed through schiller's mind, while the pale youth at his side was narrating, in a voice often interrupted by sobs and tears, the history of his sufferings. it was a simple, unvarnished story of that suffering and want altogether too proud to seek sympathy or relief. a story such as we might daily hear, if our ears were open to the mute pleadings that so often speak to us in the pale, careworn countenances of our fellow-travellers in the journey of life. why repeat what is as old as the world! a shipwrecked life, a shipwrecked calling! there was that in this son of poverty which urged him to the acquisition of knowledge; he believed his mind endowed with treasures, and his ambitions heart whispered: "you will one day be a renowned preacher! god gave you inspiration; inspiration will give you the words with which to move the hearts of men!" he was the son of a poor tailor, but his father looked with pride on the boy who always brought home the best testimonials from his school, and who was held up to the other scholars as a model of diligence. it would be an honor for the whole family if the tailor's son should become a learned man and a pastor. all that the parents could save and earn by hard work they willingly devoted to the education of their son, that he might become a scholar, and the pride of his family. what is there, that is glorious and beautiful, which parental love does not hope for, and prophesy for the darling son? young theophilus had passed his examination with honor, and had repaired to the university in leipsic to continue his studies when the sad intelligence of his father's death reached him, summoning him back to dresden, to his mother's assistance. he now learned, what he, the student who had lived only in his books, had hitherto had no knowledge of whatever. he learned that his affectionate father had contracted debts, and pawned all that he possessed, in order that his son's studies might be promoted. when the father found it no longer possible to assist his son, he had died of grief. and now the usurers and creditors came and took possession of every thing, regardless of the distressful cries of the unhappy mother, and the protestations of her despairing son. the law awarded them all, and they took all! theophilus had reason to esteem it almost a blessing when his mother followed her husband to the grave a short time afterward. in the hospital of the ursuline sisters, he had at least found shelter for her, and six days afterward she found rest in her last abode in the narrow coffin accorded her by charity. but where was a refuge to be found for the poor son who had so suddenly been driven from the study into the desert of life, where he could find no oasis in which to refresh himself and rest his wearied limbs? at first he refused to be discouraged, and struggled bravely. so little is needed to sustain life! and for this little he was willing to give all the knowledge acquired by honest diligence. he applied to the rich, to the learned, to artists; he offered his services, he wished to give instruction, to teach children. but, where were his recommendations? what guaranties had he to offer? the man who sought work was taken for a beggar, and the persons to whom he applied either turned their backs on him, or else offered a petty gratuity! this he invariably rejected; he wished to work, he was not a beggar. his unseasonable pride was ridiculed, his indignation called beggar insolence! long days of struggling, of hunger, and of humiliations; long nights without shelter, rest, or refreshment! this little wood, on the river bank, had been his bedchamber for a long time. here, on the bed of moss, accorded him by nature, he had struggled with despair, feeling that it was gradually entwining him in its icy grasp! finally, it held him as in a vice, and he felt that escape was no longer possible. hunger had then spoken to him in the tempter's voice, and whispered to his anxious soul that crime might still save him; it whispered that he could not be blamed for a theft committed under such circumstances, and hard-hearted society would alone bear the responsibility. then, in his anguish, he had determined to seek refuge, from the tempter's voice, in death, in the silent bed of the river. theophilus narrated this sad history of his sufferings with many sighs and groans. he painted a very gloomy picture of his life, and schiller was deeply moved. he laid his hand on the poor youth's pale brow and looked upwards, an expression of deep devotion and solemn earnestness depicted in his countenance. "thou hast listened to the wails of two mortals to-day, thou spirit of the universe. the one spoke to thee in the anger of a man, the other in the despairing cry of a youth. impart, to both of them, of thy peace, and of thy strength! give to the man the resignation which teaches him that his mission on earth is not to be happy, but to struggle; teach the youth that the darkest night is but the harbinger of coming day, and that he must not despair while in darkness and gloom, but ever look forward hopefully to the coming light." "thou hast had hope--in thy belief thy prize- thy life was centred in it," murmured theophilus, smiling sadly. schiller started and looked inquiringly at the youth, who, in so strange a coincidence of thought, had given expression to his despair in lines taken from the same poem from which the poet had repeated a verse in his hour of trial. "are the lines you have just uttered your own?" asked schiller. "no," replied the youth, softly, "from whence should such inspiration come to me. the lines are from schiller's poem, 'to resignation,' from the pen of the poet who is the favorite of the gods and muses, the poet who is adored by all germany." "do you know this frederick schiller, of whom you speak with such admiration?" "no, i have never seen him, nor do i desire to see him! i love and adore him as a sublime spirit, as a disembodied genius. i would, perhaps, envy him if he should appear before me in human form." "envy him, and why?" "because he is the chosen, the happy one! i do not wish to see the poet in bodily form; i do not wish to know that he eats and drinks like other men!" "and suffers like other men, too," said schiller, softly. "no, that is impossible!" cried theophilus, with vivacity. "his soul is filled with heaven and the smiles of the divinity; he cannot suffer, he cannot be unhappy!" schiller did not reply. his head was thrown back, and he was gazing up at the heavens; the moon again shone on his countenance, and the starlight sparkled in the tears that rolled slowly down his cheeks. "he cannot suffer, he cannot be unhappy!" he repeated in a low voice. it seemed to him that a transformation was going on within himself, that he was growing larger and stronger, and that his heart had laid on a coat of armor. he sprang from the ground, stood proudly erect, and shook his arms aloft. "here truly is manly strength, the sinews are tightly drawn, the muscles are firm; a genius has selected this breast as its abode, to give it strength to shake off the burden of sorrow." he felt that his good genius had conducted him to this unhappy man, that he might be taught that the strong alone can bear pain, and that the weak must succumb under the rod of affliction. his heart was filled with pity for the weak brother at his side. "it was god's will that i should save you from death; in so doing, i however contracted the obligation to preserve your life. i will meet this obligation. tell me, what were your plans before your father's death?" "i hoped, when i should have finished my course at the university, to enter some family as teacher, where i could, in time, earn enough to enable me to go to the catholic seminary in cologne, and maintain me there, while completing my studies." "you are a catholic?" "my father was from the rhine, and my mother was of polish extraction. both were catholics, and it was their fond hope that their son might some day receive ordination and become a priest of the catholic church. it seems, however, that i have only been ordained to misery, and i could veil my head and die in shame and remorse!" "young man, this is blasphemy, you forfeit god's grace when you speak in this manner. he sent me here to save you, and with his aid i will not leave my task uncompleted. how much will enable you to prepare yourself for your future career?" "the sum that i require is so great that i scarcely dare mention it." "would one hundred dollars be sufficient?" "that is far more than i need, more than i ever possessed!" cried theophilus, almost terrified. "if i should promise to give you this amount--to give it to you here, at this same place, and at this hour, in a week from to-day, would you swear to wait patiently and hopefully until then, and to make no further wicked attempt on your life?" "i would swear to do so," replied theophilus, in a trembling and tearful voice. "by the memory of your father and mother?" "by the memory of my father and mother!" "well, then, my brother, with god's help i will bring you the money in a week from to-day. i would say to-morrow, if i had the money; but i am poor, like you, my brother. no, this is hardly true. i am rich, for i have friends, and these friends will furnish the money you require, if i entreat them to do so." "you will narrate my history to your friends?" said theophilus, blushing. "that i will have to do, in order to awaken sympathy, but i will not mention your name, nor will i so closely narrate the circumstances that they can possibly divine of whom i am speaking. moreover, you told me that you had no friends or acquaintances in dresden?" "true," sighed theophilus, letting his head sink on his breast, "misfortune knows itself only, and cares are its only friends. it conceals its wounds, and hides itself in darkness. but i have no longer the right to be proud; i bow my head in humility. plead my cause, my noble, generous friend, my saviour! god's mercy will give you eloquence, and the consciousness of having saved a human being from disgrace and crime will make your words irresistible. my heart is filled with the joyful conviction that god has sent you as a messenger of peace and reconciliation. i will believe in, and confide in you; i will live, because you tell me to live!" "live, my brother, and hope!" said schiller, gently. "await me at this place, and at this hour, a week from to-day; i hope to bring you the money. but you must have something with which to purchase the necessaries of life until then. here, my brother, take all that i have in my purse. i have only four dollars, but that sum will suffice to provide you with food and lodging." theophilus took the money, and kissed the giver's hand. "i have proudly rejected the gifts offered me by the rich, preferring to die rather than receive their heartless charity. but from you, brother samaritan, i humbly accept the gift of love. i willingly burden myself with this debt of gratitude." "let us now separate," said schiller. "in a week we meet again. but _one_ request i desire to make of you." "you have but to command, and i will obey you implicitly." "i beg you not to attempt to find me out, or to learn who i am? we have seen each other's countenances in the moonlight, but they were covered with a golden veil. do not attempt to remove this veil in the light of day, and to learn my name. i feel assured that you will make no mention of this incident of to-night, but i also desire to avoid meeting you in future. i therefore beg you not to go out much in dresden, and not to frequent the main streets of the city. if we should meet, my heart would prompt me to extend my hand and speak to you, and that would not be desirable." "further down on the elbe there is a little inn where i can board cheaply. from here i will go to this inn and there remain till the appointed hour. i will not go near the city." "good-night, brother!" said schiller, extending his hand. "here we shall meet again. and now, turn you to the left, and i will turn to the right. may good spirits watch over us till our return!" chapter v. separation. schiller walked homeward with rapid strides. the streets of the city were silent and deserted, and the houses enveloped in darkness. he passed by the house in which she lived for whom he had suffered so much. he did not look up, but his head sank lower on his breast, and a feeling of unutterable sadness came over him; but he had no pity for himself, not a single sigh or complaint escaped his breast. a sensation of chilliness crept over him as he now entered his solitary dwelling. no one was there to extend the hand of sympathy and bid him welcome. his two friends had awaited his return for a long time, but had finally gone home. they knew their friend's disposition, they knew that schiller always avoided men when his passions were aroused, and sought out some solitude where no eye could witness his struggle to subdue them. "he very probably has gone to loschwitz, to spend a few days in the pavilion in which he wrote 'don carlos,'" said körner. "his genius always directs the poet aright, and he possesses the healing balsam for his wounds in his own breast. i will go to loschwitz myself, to-morrow, to see if he is there, and to make a few inquiries as to his condition. if i find him there i shall leave him to himself till his agitation and passion have subsided, and he voluntarily returns to his friends." "but if he is not there?" said göschen, anxiously, as they stepped out into the street. "i never before saw schiller in so violent a state of excitement. if this fearful awakening from his delusion should overcome him--if in his despair he should--" "do not conclude your sentence," said körner, interrupting him, "do not utter that terrible word. do not insult your absent friend; remember that he is a genius. he will not yield to despair like an ordinary man; his soul will soon recover its buoyancy." but for this night, at least, körner's prophecy was not destined to be fulfilled. true, schiller had overcome despair, but the pain still rankled in his breast. the bed on which he threw himself in his physical exhaustion was a bed of pain. his thoughts and remembrances were the thorns that pierced his heart, and drove sleep from his couch. he arose the next morning at a late hour in a state of feverish excitement, entered his plainly-furnished parlor, and looked gloomily around him. but yesterday his parlor had looked so cosey and comfortable, to-day it seemed so bare and desolate. those flowers in the little vase were but yesterday so bright and fragrant, to-day they were faded. the books and papers on his table were in the greatest disorder. the appearance of the room awakened in schiller the sensation of sadness and desolation we experience on entering the deserted room of a dear friend who has suddenly left us. yes, joy, love, hope, and enthusiasm, had departed from this room; it now looked dreary and desolate. how can we work, how can we write poetry, without enthusiasm, without joy? "elegies on a faithless sweetheart," said schiller, in loud, mocking tones. "a tearful poem, with the title: 'when last i saw her in the circle of her suitors;' or 'the amorous swain outwitted!'" he burst into laughter, stepped to the window, and commenced tapping on the panes with his fingers, as he had done when körner and göschen first aroused his suspicions concerning his love. he was now reminded of this; he hastily withdrew his hands and walked back into the room. but he suddenly recoiled, and uttered a cry of dismay, as though he had seen a ghost. marie von arnim stood in the doorway, pale but composed, her large blue eyes fastened with an imploring expression on schiller's countenance. she gave him no time to recover from his surprise, but locked the door behind her, threw her bonnet and shawl on a chair, and walked forward into the room. "schiller," said she, in a soft, trembling voice, "i have come because i do not wish you to despise me, because i do not wish the thought of me to leave a shadow on your memory." he had now recovered his composure; a feeling of anger raged in him and demanded utterance. "what is there surprising in your coming? why should you not have come? ladies of rank go in person to their tailors and shoemakers when they desire to make purchases or leave orders, why should you not come to a poet to order a nuptial poem. i am right in supposing that the young lady wishes me to write a poem in honor of her approaching nuptials with count kunheim, am i not? i am also right, i believe, as regards the name of that favored member of the exclusive family circle of yesterday, who is destined to become that young lady's husband?" "yes, you are," she replied, softly. "you see, schiller, i have not interrupted you, but have received your words as the penitent receives the blows of the rod, without complaint or murmur, although blood is streaming from her wounds. but now be merciful, schiller! let this punishment suffice, and listen to me!" "i know what the substance of the poem is to be," observed schiller, in the same threatening voice. "undoubtedly you desire a sort of illustration of the courtship, from the first meeting down to the avowal, and then the golden honeymoon is to be painted in brilliant colors. probably it would meet your wishes if a comical feature were also introduced; for instance: a poor poet, who, in his absurd conceit, had dared to consider himself count kunheim's equal, and who, acting on this belief, had even dared to fall in love with the beautiful young lady, who, of course, only laughed at his presumption." "no, schiller, who would have been the proudest and happiest of women if circumstances had permitted her to avow her love freely and openly." "yes," cried schiller, gruffly, "circumstances are always the scapegoats of the weak and faithless. i, however, admit the difficulties arising from the circumstances by which you were surrounded in this instance. you were making use of the poet's love to allure richer suitors into your toils, a game requiring some finesse. my rôle was neither a flattering nor a grateful one, but yet it was a rôle, and a dramatic poet cannot expect to have good ones only. but enough of this! let us speak of the poem. when must it be ready?" "schiller," she cried, almost frantic, tears streaming from her eyes, "schiller, will you have no pity on me?" "did you have pity on me?" asked he, with a sudden transition from his mocking to an angry tone of voice, and regarding marie, who had folded her hands humbly, and was looking up at him entreatingly, with glances that grew darker and angrier as he spoke. "i ask you, did you have pity on me? did it never occur to you, while engaged in your shrewd calculation, that you were preparing to give me a wound for which there is no cure? when two loving hearts are torn asunder by death or the hand of fate, the pain can be borne, and time may heal the wound; when the cruel laws of human society compel us to separate from those we love, a consolation still remains. the sacred, the undimmed remembrance of past hours of bliss, and the hope that time, the great equalizer, may remove all obstacles, still remains. but what consolation remains to him who has been cheated of his love, his enthusiasm, and his ideal?--to me, over whose heart the remembrance of this deception lies like a pall? from whence am i to derive faith, hope, and confidence, now that you, whom i loved, have deceived me? you have not only destroyed my happiness, but you have also offended the genius of poetry within me. henceforth all will seem cold and insipid. the word 'enthusiasm' will ring in my ear like a mockery. i will even mistrust the vows of fidelity uttered by the lips of my dramatic creations; for, now that you have so shamefully deceived me, there is no longer any thing noble, pure, and beautiful." he hurled a last angry glance at her, and then turned away, walked to the window and looked out into the street. marie von arnim followed him and laid her cold, trembling hand on his arm. "schiller, if i were really the woman you take me to be, would i have come to you at the risk of being observed by others--at the risk of its becoming known throughout the city that i had visited you? i have come, schiller, because i was unwilling that the most beautiful music of my life should end in discord, because i was unwilling that you should remember me with anger, when i only deserve commiseration." "commiseration!" repeated schiller, shrugging his shoulders. "yes," she continued, in a soft voice, "yes, i deserve it. i am not bad, not faithless, and not false. i am only a poor girl whose heart and hands have been fettered by fate. a poor girl who cannot do what she would, but must obey god's command and submit to her mother's will. do not require me to acquaint you with all the misery which afflicts my family, with the cares and humiliations which those must suffer who cover their want with a veil of wealth, and polish and plate iron poverty till it has the appearance of golden plenty. believe me, schiller, we are so poor that we do not know how we are to escape from our importunate creditors." "and yet, you gave agreeable dinners, and entertained the exclusive family circle at delightful suppers," observed schiller, jeeringly, and without even turning to look at marie, who stood behind him. "my mother would have it so, schiller. she had sold her last jewels in order that she might be able to come to dresden, where she hoped to marry her daughter to a fortune. schiller, you will believe me when i swear that i knew nothing of this, and that my first and greatest joy on coming to dresden was experienced when i made your acquaintance, and when you honored me with your notice! schiller, i have dreamed a sweet, a blissful dream." "and the light in the window was the night-lamp in this dream," he observed, in mocking tones. "i make no attempt to justify myself," said she, gently. "my mother gave me her commands, and i was compelled to obey. when she yesterday declared to me that the only issue out of all her troubles was for me to accept count kunheim's addresses, and begged me to do so, i only consented after a long and fruitless struggle, after many tears and entreaties. i yielded to my mother's commands, but i exacted this condition: schiller must now learn the whole truth, these little mysteries must cease, and no light shall be placed at the window this evening, requesting him not to come. this, my mother promised, but she was cruel enough to break her promise." "so that i should still wander about, a deluded and credulous simpleton, if i had not broken through the barriers of the exclusive family circle in defiance of the warning light." "i am thankful that fate willed otherwise, and frustrated my mother's intentions," said marie, gently. "when we are compelled to deny any one the happiness we would so willingly accord, it is our duty to tell him the truth, although it may be painful. truth is a two-edged sword; it not only wounds him who hears, but him also who imparts it. i have come, schiller," continued marie in an agitated voice, after a short pause, "to take leave of you--to say to you: schiller, we shall never meet again in life, let us part in peace!" "never again!" murmured he, slowly turning his countenance toward the woman, who had heretofore looked so bright and joyous, so radiant with youth and beauty, and who now stood at his side so humble and submissive, her tearful eyes raised imploringly to his. "never again!" sighed marie. "our paths in life will henceforth be widely separated. i intend to marry the man whose wealth will save my mother and brother. i will be to him a faithful and grateful wife, although i may not be a loving one. i am to be affianced to count kunheim at noon to-day, and i have employed the last hour of my liberty in coming here to take leave of you, schiller, and to beg forgiveness for the pain inflicted on you, of which i am the innocent cause." "the innocent cause!" cried schiller, turning around and staring at her with his large, flaming eyes. "how can you say that you are the innocent cause of the pain which you inflicted on me? you knew that i loved you. i told you so, and you listened to my avowal. you gave me hope, although you must have known that my love was hopeless." "you speak of yourself only," rejoined marie, in low and trembling tones. "you are not thinking of me at all; it does not occur to you that i also have suffered, that i also have hoped. yes, schiller, i did suppose that my mother would yield to my prayers and entreaties; even yesterday i conjured her on my knees to permit me to seek my own happiness in my own way, as my heart prompted. at that time i was not aware that my mother's circumstances were so desperate. i knew not that her honor and even her liberty were endangered. when she admitted that such was the case, when she disclosed the whole sorrowful truth, i felt as though my heart would break, as though all the blossoms of my future had suddenly faded. the conviction forced itself upon me that it was my duty to sacrifice, to my mother's welfare, my own wishes and hopes. i did my duty; i gave up my own happiness to save my mother--to secure, at least, a ray of sunshine in the evening of her life. i have submitted. i will become the wife of count kunheim." "and will say to him that you joyfully accept and reciprocate his generous love!" "no, i will not tell this noble man a falsehood, nor have i done so. when he yesterday evening offered me his hand, i told him honestly and openly that i esteemed and confided in him, and would be a very thankful and faithful wife, but that my heart was no longer free--a love dwelt therein that could never die, for it was schiller whom i loved!" "you told him that?" asked schiller, with emotion. "and he--" "he agreed with me that the heart which loved schiller could never forget him, but added that he would only esteem me the more, and could never be jealous on account of this love. he said that my love for schiller should be the altar of our married life and of our house--the altar to which we would bring the fruits of our noblest thoughts and feelings." "noble, generous man!" cried schiller, "yes, he deserves to be happy and to possess you. be his wife, marie, and do your duty. let the early blossom of your heart fade, and let the full summer-rose of your love bloom for your husband. you can do so, marie, for--i say it without anger or ill-will--you have never loved me! no, do not contradict, do not attempt to assure me that such is not the case. in this hour, when my soul is elevated above all selfish wishes and desires--in this hour, i rejoice in recognizing the fact, _you have never loved me_. i know that a kind providence has thus spared you the pain i now endure; i know you will be happy at the side of the noble and high-souled man who demands your hand in marriage. i do not mean to say that you will soon forget me; i think too well of myself to believe this. no, you will yet shed tears when you think of him who loved you, but the bridegroom will be there to dry these tears. with tender sympathy he will speak to you of your love, as of a beautiful dream of the spring-time, and you will find that the awakening from this dream on a bright, flowery summer day, is also beautiful, and that will console you. some day, after many years, when my pain has long since vanished, and i have gone home to the unknown land from whence no traveller returns--some day, when your weeping children and grandchildren surround your couch, and you feel your last hour approaching, you will once more remember this dream of the spring-time. it will greet you like a ray of sunshine from the new life that is dawning. with a smile on your lips, you will turn to your children and say: 'i leave you gold and treasures, a brilliant name and high rank. but i leave you a more precious legacy. schiller loved me, and a poet's love is a blessing that is inherited from generation to generation. your father's name gives you rank and honor before men, but the love which the poet consecrated to your mother gives you renown and immortality. strive to be worthy of this love. go to the grave of the poet who died in solitude and poverty, and pray for him!'" "no, schiller, that will not be all that i say to those who will some day surround my death-bed," said marie, drying her tears, in order that her large, luminous eyes might gaze at his sad countenance more fully and firmly. "i will say to them: 'i am now returning to god, and to my first, my imperishable love. in death i may proudly and joyfully confess i have loved schiller! i still love him!'" the poet, as if irresistibly attracted by her enthusiasm and her glowing countenance--hardly knowing what he did--extended his arms toward marie. she threw herself on his breast; he pressed her gently to his heart, and let his hand rest lovingly on her head. it was a silent and solemn moment, a last blissful and sorrowful embrace. their lips were dumb, but their hearts communed in holy thought and prayer. after a pause, schiller gently raised up between his hands the head that was still resting on his breast; he gazed long and lovingly into the fair girl's countenance. the tears that flowed from his eyes fell on hers like glowing pearls, mingling with her own tears and trickling down her cheeks. schiller bowed his head, and kissed the lips that responded warmly to his own. he then pressed her hands to his eyes and released her from his embrace. she turned slowly, walked toward the door, and put on her shawl and bonnet. "farewell, schiller!" "farewell, marie!" and now she stood in the doorway, her eyes fastened on him in a last lingering look. he stood silently regarding her. a grating noise broke in upon the silence; it was the closing door behind which marie had vanished. schiller remained standing at the same place, his eyes fixed on the door. had it suddenly grown so dark? was the sun overcast? or was it only the tears in his eyes that made the room look so gloomy? had a storm suddenly arisen? did an earthquake make the ground tremble beneath him? or was it only the storm of passion that was passing over his head? why was it that his knees trembled, and that he would have fallen to the ground had not a chair stood near by, into which he sank, groaning? the hour in which a man wrestles with his agony--the hour of renunciation and conquest, is sacred; the eye of god only may witness it, but no tongue must attempt to describe it, unless indeed that of the poet whose pain is surrounded by the halo of poetry--the poet to whom the hour of renunciation has also become the hour of enthusiasm. some one is weeping and lamenting behind that door. is it marie? some one is speaking in loud and earnest tones behind this door. is it the poet composing an inscription for the gravestone of his love? "give me thy laura--give me her whom love to thy heart's core endears; i tore the fond shape from the bleeding love, and gave--albeit with tears!" a loud knock is heard at the door, and then a second, and a third, in quick succession. schiller shakes back the hair from his countenance, and hastens forward to see who is clamoring for admission. chapter vi. the song "to joy." it was the postman, who brought the poet a rosy, perfumed letter from weimar. with eager hands, schiller opened and unfolded the missive. his countenance beamed with joy as he recognized madame von kalb's handwriting. "good and noble woman, you have not forgotten me! do you still think of me lovingly?" no, she had not forgotten him; she still loved him, and begged him, with tender and eloquent entreaties, to come to her. "schiller, the world is a solitude without you; you are the thought of my inmost thoughts, the soul of my soul! frederick, separation from you has disclosed the holy mystery of your heart and of mine. it is this: we are the two halves that were one in heaven, and our mission on earth is to strive to come together, in order that our eternal indivisibility and unity of spirit may be restored. schiller, when we are once more united, hand in hand, and are gazing in each other's eyes, we shall feel as if we had left the earth and were once more in heaven. frederick, come to your charlotte!" "yes, i am coming to my charlotte, i am coming!" cried schiller, in a loud voice, as he pressed the letter to his lips. "you have saved me, you have made me myself again, charlotte! i am no longer lonely, no longer unloved. your heart calls me, your spirit longs for me. i feel as though my soul's wings, destined to bear me aloft above the misery of earth, were growing stronger. they will bear me to you, charlotte--to you, the dearest friend of my life! you shall console, you shall restore me, your friendship shall be the balsam for the wounds of my heart. eternal fate, i thank thee for having permitted me to hear this call of friendship in this my hour of trial. i thank thee that there is still one soul that i can call mine; i praise thee that i am not compelled to stand aside in shame and tears, like an unloved, friendless beggar, while the happy are feasting at the richly-laden table of life. one soul i can at least call my own, and i will keep her holy, and love and thank her all the days of my life. away with tears! away with this sorrowing over a dream of happiness! farewell, marie! be forgiven. i will think of you without anger, and rejoice when you become a happy countess! farewell, marie![32] a greeting to you, charlotte! i am coming to you! i am coming!" he walked slowly to and fro; the cloud of sorrow that had rested on his brow gradually lifted, and his countenance grew clearer and clearer. the man had conquered--the poet was once more himself. "i will go to körner! i must see my friend!" he took down his hat, and walked out into the street. his mind had freed itself of its fetters, his step was elastic, and he bore himself proudly, his blue eyes turned heavenward, and a joyous smile rested on his thin and delicate lips. thus he entered körner's dwelling, and found his friend on the point of starting to loschwitz, to see what had become of the poet. schiller extended both hands and greeted him with a loving glance. "here i am again, my friend. the prodigal son returns from his wanderings, and begs to be permitted to take up his abode in your heart once more. will you receive him, friend körner?" "i will not only receive him, but will kill the fatted calf in honor of his return. i will give a festival, to which all our friends shall be invited, in order that they may rejoice with me, and exclaim, 'the wanderer has returned! blessed be the hour of his return!'" schiller threw himself into his friend's arms, and pressed him to his heart. "i have caused you much sorrow and trouble. i have been a wild and stubborn fellow. why should beautiful women be blamed for not loving this ungainly and unmannerly fellow, when there are so many handsomer, richer, and happier men in the world? marie von arnim is right in marrying the rich and handsome count kunheim; and you must not blame her on this account, or say of her that she deceived me. she has only done what we all must do on earth: she has done her duty, and god will bless her and give her his peace in the hour of death for so doing.--but let us speak no more of this." "no, my friend, we will speak of it no more," said körner, heartily; "let us only rejoice that you have returned to your friends; that you once more believe in us and our friendship. how happy my wife will be when her dear friend is restored to her again! how glad göschen will be when you once more extend your hand to him in a loving greeting!" "poor, generous göschen!" said schiller, thoughtfully. "i was cruel and unjust to him yesterday, i imputed ignoble motives to my friend!" "he thinks of it no longer," said körner; "he has no memory for the words spoken by your anguish. he will be only too happy when you once more greet him with a loving smile." "how good and patient you all are with me!" said schiller, softly; "and how little have i deserved such treatment at your hands! in truth, i feel as though i had now returned to you after a long separation--as though i had only seen you of late through a cloud that had arisen between us, and in which a single star shone, and-be still, no more of this! the cloud has been dissipated; i now see you again, and will rejoice with you as long as we are together." "schiller, you do not contemplate leaving us?" said körner, sadly. "i am a poor wanderer, my friend, whose stay at any one place is but brief. at last, a time will come even for me, when i can lay down my staff and knapsack, and exclaim, 'here i will rest! this is my home!' but the gods only know whether this home will be in the grave or in the heart of a woman!" "no sad thoughts now, my friend, if you please, now that i am ready to exult and rejoice over your return!" "you are right, no sad thoughts at this time! let us turn our thoughts to joy. the first song i write shall be in praise of joy. i will no longer avoid mankind, no longer seek solitude! as you said, körner, so shall it be! give the prodigal son a festival, call our friends together, let us once more assemble around the festive board and partake of the repast of friendship and joy. this festival shall be in honor of my return and of my departure." körner gave this festival. the lost one, who had of late withdrawn himself from his friends in the violence of his love, had now returned, and this was a fitting occasion for joy and festivity. he called his friends together; he had for each a kind word and a tender greeting. göschen was richly rewarded when schiller gave him the manuscript of his don carlos, that was now to be given to the world, and to entwine the halo of immortality around the poet's brow, and to enkindle and fan the flame of enthusiasm in thousands and thousands of hearts! six days after schiller's "return," the festival which körner had promised took place. körner and his beautiful young wife, theresa huber, göschen, and the artist sophie albrecht, were present; a few friends in leipsic had also joyfully availed themselves of körner's invitation, and had come to dresden to see the poet once more. there he sat at the festive board, his arm thrown around körner's neck; in his right hand he held the goblet filled with sparkling rhine wine. his eyes beamed and his countenance shone with enthusiasm. his glance was directed upward, and, perhaps, he saw the heavens open and the countenance of the blessed, for a soft and joyous smile played about his lips. "look at this favorite of the muses," cried körner. "one might suppose they held him in their embrace, and were whispering words of inspiration into his poet's heart." "perhaps they are whispering a song of joy in my ear, my friend, in order that i may repeat it to you, the favorite of the gods! but before i do so, i will narrate a history--a history that will touch your hearts and open your purses, unless you are cold-hearted egotists, and then you deserve to share the fate of king midas, whose very food and wine were turned into gold because he was a hard-hearted miser. i condemn you to this punishment if you have the courage to listen to my story without being moved to tears and generosity!" with deep pathos and eloquence schiller recounted to his listening friends his midnight adventure, his conversation with the poor youth who had attempted to take his own life. so graphic was his representation of the unfortunate youth's distress and vain struggles, that the hearts of his hearers were deeply touched, and no eye remained dry. when he had concluded his narrative and told his friends of the promise he had made to poor theophilus, schiller arose from his seat, took the plate which lay before him, and walked around the table, halting at each seat and extending his plate like a beggar, with soft words of entreaty. when the ready hands opened and dollars and gold-pieces rang out on the plate, schiller inclined his head and smiled, thanking the givers with looks of tenderness. now he had returned to his seat and was counting the money. "seventeen gold-pieces and thirty dollars. i thank you, my friends! you have saved a human life; you have redeemed a soul from purgatory! to-morrow night i will take this love-offering to the poor youth; the blessing of a good man will then rest on your closed eyelids, and you will be rewarded with sweet dreams and a happy awakening. now, my dear friends, you shall receive from the poet's lips the thanks that are glowing in my heart. now, you shall hear the exulting song to joy which körner supposed the muses were whispering in my ear. raise your glasses and listen; when i incline my head repeat the words last spoken." schiller arose, drew a small, folded sheet of paper from his pocket, opened it, glanced over it hastily, and then let it fall on the table. he did not require it; his song resounded in his mind and brain; it was written on the tablets of his heart, and his lips now uttered it exultantly: "joy, thou brightest heaven-lit spark, daughter from the elysian choir, on thy holy ground we walk, reeling with ecstatic fire!" his eyes shone with enthusiasm, his cheeks glowed, and a heavenly smile illumined his whole countenance, while reciting his song "to joy." his friends caught the inspiration of his poem, arose with one accord from their seats, clasped hands and gazed into each other's eyes--into the eyes that shone lustrously, although they were filled with tears. now, at the culminating point of his rapture, schiller's countenance suddenly quivered with pain as he recited a second verse of his song: "yea--who calls _one_ soul his own, _one_ on all earth's ample round:- who cannot, may steal alone, weeping from our holy ground." "who cannot, may steal alone, weeping from our holy ground," repeated his friends. the tears gushed from their eyes; they clasped hands more firmly, and listened breathlessly to the words of the poet, whose voice now rose again to the high tones of enthusiasm. it was almost like an adoration of joy, friendship, and love. their hearts beat higher, mightier and mightier the waves of rapture surged in their kindred souls. "myriads join the fond embrace! 'tis the world's inspiring kiss. friends, yon dome of starry bliss is a loving father's place." they embraced each other; they wept, but with rapture, with enthusiasm. the kiss that passed from mouth to mouth was given to the whole world; for all that the world could offer of love, of friendship, and of happiness, the friends found combined at the happy festival to which schiller had dedicated his song "to joy." chapter vii. together once more. night had come, a dark, gloomy night. the moonlight that had played so beautifully, on the rippling waters of the elbe, a week before, was wanting on this night. the sky was overcast, and the clouds that were being driven through the heavens by the wind, cast on the river dark shadows that looked like yawning graves. theophilus stood on the river bank at the same place where he had knelt and prayed a week before. he stood there gazing at the dark river and looking up from time to time at the driving clouds. "if he should not respect his word, if he should not be able to keep his promise, because no generous hearts responded to his entreaties! what then? will this river be my grave? are the waves murmuring my death-song? no, no! be brave, theophilus; wait patiently, be strong in hope! his voice was so gentle, so full of conviction, when he promised to meet me here to-night, to bring me help! he appeared before me like the angel gabriel; i will believe that god sent him in human form, and that he will also send him a second time. hope, my heart, and be strong in faith!" he folded his hands in silent prayer, and listened anxiously to every slight noise other than the murmuring of the waves on the shore, and the rustling of the wind in the trees, that broke in upon the stillness of the night. some distance up the river, on its opposite bank, lay the city with its many lights. on the elbe bridge, towering conspicuously above all other objects, stood the gilded crucifix, surrounded by a circle of lighted lamps, placed there by pious hands. theophilus saw this crucifix, and it awakened pious thoughts and brave resolutions in his breast. "i will endure all that may befall me in patience and hope. by resignation and pious devotion, i will endeavor to atone for the sins committed in my despair. my whole life belongs to thee, my god, and shall be dedicated to thy service! i will serve the poor and the unfortunate. every man who suffers shall be my brother, to every man who stumbles will i extend a helping hand. i will strive to dry the tears of the weeping, and, if i can do nothing else, i will, at least, pray with them. this, i swear to thee, my god!--this i swear by yon luminous crucifix!" the great bell resounded from the tower of the catholic church, striking the eleventh hour. theophilus shuddered; he remembered that he had heard this bell at the moment when he was on the point of plunging into his watery grave, and that it had then resounded on his ear like a death-knell. "never will i hear this hour strike without fear and trembling. it will always sound to me like the knell of the doomed criminal. grant, o god, that in such an hour i may prove myself a repentant sinner, and make atonement for my crime! i resolve that i will do so," cried he, in a loud voice. "i swear that this eleventh hour shall each day remind me of my crime, and find me ready to devote to the welfare of mankind the life i was about to sacrifice to despair." "in the name of god and humanity i accept your vow!" said a solemn voice behind him. "here i am, my brother. forgive me for having kept you waiting, but important business prevented my coming earlier, and i found it difficult to steal away from the friends who were with me, without attracting observation. while awaiting me, you have formed good resolutions, and made your peace with god and your conscience. hold fast to them, my brother; be firm and brave. elevate your thoughts above things perishable, let your soul soar above the vanities of earthly existence, and you will find that spiritual joys will amply console you for the sorrows of earth. here is the money i have brought you, here are one hundred and twenty dollars. according to your calculation it will suffice to enable you to complete your studies, and give you a start in your career. take the money, my friend, and let us part." "part! without giving me the name of my benefactor and saviour?" asked theophilus, holding the hand, that had given him the money, firmly clasped in his own. "part! and may i never hope to see and thank you in the light of day?" "thank me, my brother, by being happy. bear the light of day within you, and then i shall be rewarded, then my memory will live in your heart. why should i tell you my name? i am your brother, let that suffice. go on your way, be just, and do good to others who are suffering and who are unhappy, as you were. this shall be my thanks: i say to you, with christ: 'what you do to the least of these my brethren, that you have done unto me.' bear this in mind!" the voice was silent; theophilus knew that he was again alone. he folded his hands, bowed his head, and prayerfully repeated the words, that, in the stillness of the night, and amid the rustling of the wind, had resounded on his ear like the solemn tones of an organ. "what you do to the least of these my brethren, that you have done unto me. bear this in mind!" "i will bear this in mind! i will endeavor to atone for the evil i have done! i dedicate myself to god's service. the holy crucifix, that illumines the surrounding darkness, has also illumined the darkness of my soul. i will go to cologne, and enter the seminary, in order that i may become a priest--a pious, humble priest of the church of god. farewell! earthly vanity, earthly pride, and earthly hope! i will be a priest of mercy, for god has shown me mercy, and sent an angel-messenger to save me. i will bear this in mind!" while theophilus was wending his way to dresden, schiller was journeying toward weimar in the stage-coach. after giving theophilus the money collected for him, schiller had hurried to the post-office, where his friends were waiting to take leave of him, and bid the traveller a last farewell. "farewell! we shall soon meet again; i will soon return!" cried schiller from the stage-coach, as it rolled out of the court-yard on through the city gate into the soft summer night. "charlotte is awaiting me!" murmured schiller, as he sank back on the hard cushions. "charlotte is awaiting me. she is the friend of my soul. our spirits belong to each other, and i will show my friend the wounds of my heart, in order that she may heal them with the balsam of tender friendship." but, strange to say, the nearer he came to his journey's end, the more joyfully his heart throbbed, the less painful its wounds became. "charlotte, dear charlotte, if i were but already with you! i feel that the fire which drove me from mannheim is not yet extinguished; a breath from your lips will suffice to kindle the spark into a conflagration." there is weimar! now the stage-coach has entered the city. schiller is on classic ground! on the ground where germany's greatest poets and intellects dwell. wieland and herder, bertuch and bode, dwell here; here are also many artists and actors of eminence, and here lives the genial duke charles august! and yet weimar is desolate, for goethe is not here; he left more than a year ago. schiller knew this, but what did he care now! he had so longed to tread this classic ground that his heart throbbed with joy at the prospect of seeing and becoming acquainted with the celebrated men whose works he had read with so much enthusiasm--whom he could now meet with the feeling that he was not unworthy of them, and that he also now filled a place in the republic of intellect. he had been occupied with these thoughts during the whole journey; but now they suddenly vanished. he thought only of madame von kalb, the friend he had not seen for two years--the friend whose dear lips had called him to her side in the hour of his deepest distress. he had taken lodgings in the chief hotel of the city; it was already quite late in the evening, so late that it seemed hardly proper to call on a lady. he would not remain in his solitary chamber, but would walk out, and at least look at the house in which she lived. if the lights had, however, not yet been extinguished, if she should still be awake-he did not complete this thought, but sprang down the steps, ordered the servant, who was walking to and fro in the hall, to accompany him and show him the house in which madame von kalb lived, and rushed down the designated street with such long and rapid strides that the servant could scarcely follow him. there is the house in which madame von kalb lives, a modest little house at the entrance of the park. a light is still burning behind the basement windows, and he sees the shadow of a tall woman pass across the closed curtains. "that is her figure, i would recognize it among thousands! that is charlotte!" "i intend to enjoy this beautiful summer night in the park," said schiller, turning to the servant, with a hasty movement. "you may return, i will be able to find my way back, alone." as soon as the servant had vanished around the next corner, he walked up to the door and opened it very softly, in order that the bell above it might not betray his entrance. "i will take her by surprise," murmured he to himself; "i will see what effect my unexpected coming will have on my dear friend." the bell rang in such low tones that it could certainly not have been heard in the room. but a servant came forward from the back end of the hall. "i call at madame von kalb's request. she is in this room, is she not?" "madame von kalb is in. may i have the honor of announcing you?" "it is unnecessary, she is awaiting me. i can enter unannounced." he had uttered these words in subdued tones; charlotte must not hear him, must know nothing of his arrival until he stood before her. he opened the door noiselessly, closed it gently behind him, and now stood between the door and the heavy velvet curtain that hung over the entrance. he could, however, see his friend through an opening in the curtain. she sat reclining on the sofa, her beautiful eyes gazing dreamingly into empty space. her cheeks were pale with inward agitation, and a soft smile played about her lips. of whom was she thinking? of whom was she dreaming? "charlotte! dear charlotte!" she uttered a cry and sprang up from her seat. "charlotte, you called me to your side, and here i am! will you not welcome me?" she stood as though incapable of utterance, but the beautiful, the loved countenance, with its proud and noble expression, its rosy lips, and soft smile, was before him. before her stood schiller, whom she had yearned for since they last parted, whom she had loved ardently and faithfully for two long, long years, without having seen him. but, now he was there, he stood before her with extended arms. she thought nothing, she felt nothing more than that schiller had returned, and was once more at her side. happy, blissful reunion! "welcome, my schiller! welcome, friend of my soul!" she threw herself on his bosom, and he entwined his arms around her, as though they were two chains with which he intended to bind, and hold her forever. yes, forever! "tell me, charlotte, that you love me! utter the word which your lips refused to confess in mannheim. do not again drive me out into the darkness of life, as you did in mannheim. i am weary of wandering, and am disgusted with the world. you alone are true, in you only can i confide. accord me a home where i may lay down my head and rest. tell me, charlotte, that this is my heart's home. tell me that you love me? you do not reply, charlotte? why are you silent?" he opened his arms to release her, that he might look at her. but she did not raise her head, she still lay on his breast. she had fainted! he lifted her in his arms, carried her to the sofa, and knelt down beside her. as she lay there with closed eyelids, and pale lips, he bowed down over her and pressed his glowing lips to hers, entreating her to return to life. "charlotte, friend, awaken! forgive me for having dared to surprise you in the wilfulness of my happiness. return to me, friend of my soul! i will be quiet and gentle, will sit at your feet like a child, and be contented to look up at your dear countenance, and read in your eyes that you love me. open these dear eyes! soul of my soul, heart of my heart, let me hear your loved voice! give me a word of consolation, of hope, of love!" and charlotte, called by the voice she had longed to hear for two long years, awoke, and looked up lovingly into the countenance of him who was the sun of her existence. she entwined her arms around his neck and kissed his lips and his eyes. "i greet you, i kiss you, proclaimer of my happiness." "you must tell me that indeed you love me. my heart thirsts for these words; it is wounded and bleeding, and you must heal it. i will drink that oblivion from your lips, charlotte, that will make me forget all, save that you love me. it is disconsolate to be alone and unloved! i cling to your heart as the shipwrecked mariner clings to the flower thrown up before him by the waves, hoping thereby to save himself. charlotte, do not let me sink, save me! let me seek safety from the storm in the haven of your love! say that you will let me seek and find peace, enthusiasm, and happiness, in this longed-for haven." she threw her arms around his neck, and pressed a kiss on his forehead. "i love you, schiller, i love you; i have the courage to tell you so, and to break through all barriers, and place myself at your side. i have the courage to testify before the whole world, and even to confess to my husband: 'i love frederick schiller. our souls and hearts are bound together. tear them asunder, if you can!' i love you, and with that i have said all--have said, that i will be yours before god and man, and that nothing shall longer separate us." "and your husband?" asked schiller, anxiously. "he is a good and generous man," said charlotte, smiling. "he will not desire to hold me fettered to himself against my wish. our union was based on convenience and interest, and was never a happy one. we have lived together but little; our natures were entirely different. i have lived in retirement, while my husband has passed his time in luxury and amusements at the court of queen marie antoinette, where he is a welcome guest. we respect and esteem, but we do not love each other. when i confess my love and plead for a divorce, my husband will certainly give his consent. then i can belong wholly to the man i not only love, but so highly esteem that i joyfully dedicate myself to him until death, and even beyond the grave." "it shall be as you say, my friend," cried schiller, raising her hand to his lips. "nothing shall separate us, and even the king of terrors shall have no terrors for us; in the joyousness of our union of souls we will defy him. yes, we will defy death, and the whole world!" they kept their promises; they defied the whole world; they made no secret of their union of hearts; they denied to none that they were one and indivisible. charlotte had the heroism to defy the world and acknowledge her love freely. she had the courage to remain whole days alone with schiller in her little house. she held herself aloof from society, in order that schiller might read to her his two new novels, and, above all, his 'don carlos.' nor did she avoid being seen with him in public. how could she deny him before men, when she was so proud of him and of his love! she helped to adorn and make comfortable the little apartments he had rented; she sent him carpets, flower-vases, chairs, and many other things. she felt that she was his mother, his sister, his sweetheart, and his friend. in the ardor of her passion, she endeavored to combine the duties of these four persons in herself; she felt that the divine strength of her love would enable her to do so. in her confidence and guilelessness of heart, she never even asked herself this question: will the man i love be willing to rise with me in this whirlwind of passion, to soar with me from heaven to heaven, and to revel in ever-youthful, celestial thought and feeling, regardless of earthly mutability? together, they visited the heroes of art and literature in weimar, and, together, they drove out to tiefurt, where the duchess amelia had taken up her summer residence. the duchess gave the poet of "don carlos" and "fiesco" a cordial welcome. "i was angry with you on account of your 'robbers,' mr. councillor," said she, "nor was 'louise müllerin' entirely to my taste. but 'fiesco,' and, above all, 'don carlos,' have reconciled me to you. you are, in truth, a great poet, and i prophesy a brilliant future for you. remain here with us in weimar!" "yes, mr. schiller," cried the little maid of honor von göckhausen, as she stepped forward, courtesied gracefully, and handed him a rose, "remain in weimar. the muses have commanded me to give you their favorite, this rose, and to tell you, _sub rosa_, that weimar is the abode of the gods, and that the nine maidens would be well contented to remain here." "göckhausen, take care," said the duchess, laughing. "i will tell goethe what a fickle, faithless little thing you are. while he was here, my thusnelda's roses bloomed for him only, and for goethe only was she the messenger of the gods and muses. now, the faithless creature is already receiving messages from the muses for frederick schiller! but she is not to be blamed; the poet of 'don carlos' deserves homage; and, when even the muses worship goethe and schiller, why should not göckhausen do it also? do you know goethe?" "no, not personally," replied schiller, softly; "but i admire him as a poet, and i shall be happy if i can some day admire and love him as a man also." "you should have come earlier," sighed the duchess. "you should have made his acquaintance during the early days of his stay in mannheim. then, you would indeed have loved him. at that time, he was in the youthful vigor of his enthusiasm. it was a beautiful era when goethe stood among us, like the genius of poetry, descended from heaven, enflaming our hearts with heavenly rapture. he is still a great poet, but he has now become a man of rank--a privy-councillor! beware, my dear councillor schiller, lest our court atmosphere stiffen you, too, and rob your heart of its youthful freshness of enthusiasm. goethe was a very god apollo before he became a privy-councillor, and was entitled to a seat and voice in the state council. by all means avoid becoming a minister; the poet and the minister cannot be combined in one man. of this, goethe is an example." "no, he is not," cried göckhausen, eagerly; "goethe can be all that it pleases him to be. he will never indeed cease to be a poet; he is one in his whole being. poetic blood courses through his veins; the minister he can shake off at any time, and be himself again. this he proved some eighteen months ago, when he suddenly took leave of our court and all its glories, and fled from the state council, and all his dignities and honors, to italy. he cast all this trumpery of ducal grace behind him, and fled to italy, to be the poet by the grace of god only!" "see, my thusnelda has returned to her old enthusiasm!" cried the duchess, laughing. "that was all i desired; i only wished to arouse her indignation, and make her love for goethe apparent.--now, mr. schiller, you see what my thusnelda's real sentiments are, and how true she is to her distant favorite." "much truer, probably, than he is to his former favorites," said göckhausen, smiling. "men cannot be true; and i am satisfied that werther, if he had not shot himself prematurely, would subsequently have consoled himself, although the adored lotte was married, and could never be his. laugh on, duchess! i am right, nevertheless. is not goethe himself an example of this? did he not love charlotte von kästner? if he had shot himself at that time, he could not have consoled himself afterwards with charlotte von stein, to become desperate once more, and finally to take a pleasant and consolatory trip to italy, instead of leaving the world. truly, the charlottes are very dangerous to poets; but i would, however, advise each and every one of them to beware of falling in love with a poet, for--how forgetful i am! i beg your pardon, madame von kalb!" "why, my dear young lady?" "because i did not remember that you, too, were a charlotte," murmured the malicious maid of honor, meekly. von kalb laughed, but she was more subdued and thoughtful after this visit than usual. her eyes often rested on schiller with a peculiar, inquiring look, and when he sat at her side on the sofa that evening, she laid her hands gently on his shoulders and gazed intently into his countenance. "you love me, schiller, do you not?" "i love you, although you are a charlotte. that is the question you intended to ask, is it not?" she smiled and laid her head on his shoulder. "schiller, i would that our union of heart and soul had already received its indissoluble consecration. i would that my husband had already given his consent to a separation and i were wholly yours." "are you not truly and wholly mine? is not our union indissoluble? does not god, does not the whole world know that we are one and inseparable? does not society respect and treat our relation to each other with consideration for both of us? the people with whom we come in contact have the discretion to leave us when they observe that we wish to be alone. did not von einsiedel, who called on you this evening, leave again when the servant told him that i was with you? was not even the duchess amelia so considerate as to invite us together yesterday; for that she did so out of consideration for the relation existing between us, wieland told me.[33] you see, therefore, my dearest friend, that no one doubts, or ignores our union." "why do you call me your dearest friend?" asked she, anxiously. "why? because you are. is it not your opinion, also, that friendship is the highest power of love?" she said yes, but she was very thoughtful after schiller had gone. "i would that my husband were here, and that the word of separation had already been spoken!" she murmured. several months passed before her husband arrived in weimar. madame had not been able to endure this uncertainty, this continued hypocrisy. she had written to her husband, confessing her love and her relation to schiller, and begging him, as her best friend, to give her his advice and to promote her happiness. her husband had replied at once as follows: "my dear friend, for the very reason that i am, as you say, your best friend, i will treat your letter as though i had not received it. it is obliterated from my memory, and i only know that i love and esteem you as the mother of my little boy, and that the dearest wish of my heart is your happiness. let us leave these little afflictions of the heart to time, the great healer. i am coming to weimar in a few months, and we shall then see if time has not exercised its healing properties on yourself and on the heart of an easily-excited poet. if this should not be the case, however, and you should then repeat the words written in your letter, it will still be time to see whether the desires of your heart can be gratified without detriment to our son's interests. let us, therefore, postpone the decision for a few months." he had also written to schiller, but without any reference to charlotte's communications. his letter was full of quite hearty sympathy, profound admiration for the poet, and earnest assurances of friendship. he concluded by announcing that he would come to weimar in a few months, and that schiller would find him ready to do him any service, and to make any sacrifice for him that the poet could expect at the hands of a friend. schiller folded the letter thoughtfully, and a glowing color suffused itself over his cheeks. "he will come," said he to himself, in a low voice. "it will be a strange meeting for me, i already blush with shame when i think of it. he loves me, he calls me his friend, and yet he knows all! will i really have the courage to demand this sacrifice of a friend, and--" asked he in a low voice--"and do i really so ardently desire this sacrifice? i came here to seek consolation from a dear friend, and i found love--love that has drawn me into the whirlpool of passion. we are both being driven around in its eddying circles, and who knows but that marriage is the sunken reef on which our hearts will ultimately be shipwrecked. save us from a violent end, thou spirit of the universe; save me from such an end, thou genius of poetry; let me fly to some peaceful haven where i can find safety from the storms of life! there is a mystery in every human breast; it is given to god only and to time, to solve it. let us, therefore, wait and hope!" when her husband arrived in weimar a few months afterward, this mystery seemed to have sunk deeper in charlotte and schiller's hearts; neither of them had the courage to lift the veil and speak the decisive word. charlotte was paler and quieter than usual, and her eyes were often stained with tears, but she did not complain and made no attempt to bring her husband to an explanation. only once, when she held her little boy, who had just recovered from an attack of illness, lovingly in her arms, her husband stepped up to her, and gave her a kind, inquiring look: "could you ever make up your mind to leave this child, charlotte--to deliver it over to the care of a stranger." "never, no, never!" cried she, folding her arms tenderly around her delicate little boy. "no, not for all the treasures--for all the happiness earth can offer, could i part with my darling child!" "and yet you would be compelled to do so, if you should lay aside the name your child's father bears," said her husband, gently. he made no explanation of his words, but his wife had well understood him, and also understood his intention when, after a short interval, he smilingly observed that he would now go to see schiller, and take a walk with his dear friend. when her husband had left the room she looked down at the pale child, who was slumbering in her arms. tears gushed from her eyes, and she folded her hands over her boy's head: "give us all peace, thou who art the spirit of eternal love! give us wisdom to discern truth and strength, to make any sacrifice in its behalf!" on the evening of this day, after a long walk which schiller had taken with charlotte's husband, and during which they had conversed on the highest intellectual topics only, schiller wrote to his bosom friend körner, in dresden: "can you believe me when i assert, that i find it almost impossible to write anything concerning charlotte? nor can i even tell you why! the relation existing between us, like revealed religion, is based on faith. the results of the long experience and slow progress of the human mind are announced in the latter in a mystical manner, because reason would have taken too long a time to attain this end. the same is the case with charlotte and myself. we commenced with a premonition of the result, and must now study and confirm our religion by the aid of reason. in the latter, as in the former case, all the intervals of fanaticism, skepticism, and superstition, have arisen, and it is to be hoped that we will ultimately arrive at that reasonable faith that is the only assurance of bliss. i think it likely that the germ of an enduring friendship exists in us both, but it is still awaiting its development. there is more unity in charlotte's mind than in my own, although she is more changeable in her humors and caprices. solitude and a peculiar tendency of her being have imprinted my image more firmly in her soul, than her image could ever be imprinted in mine. her husband treats me precisely as of yore, although he is well aware of the relation existing between us. i do not know that his presence will leave me as i am. i feel that a change has taken place within me that may be still further developed."[34] chapter viii. goethe and moritz. "cheer up, my friend! grumble no longer! rejoice in life and throw off the burden of your cares! open your eyes and behold the beauties of the world created by the almighty spirit of the universe! we have studied and worshipped the immortal gods and immortal arts in rome--we have been living with the ancients; now let us live for a few days with eternal youth, with ever-fading, ever-blossoming nature! let us live like god's children in his glorious world!" it was goethe who spoke these words--not goethe, the secretary of legation, who, at the end of the year 1786, had secretly withdrawn from his friends, and even from his beloved madame von stein, and fled to italy, the land he so ardently desired to visit. no, it was not that goethe, who, during the last months of his sojourn in weimar, had eschewed his youthful exuberance of feeling, his exaggerated manner, and his werther costume, and had assumed the grave dignified air which he deemed becoming in a high official! no, he who spoke these words, was the poet johann wolfgang von goethe, the poet who was once more himself, now that he sojourned under italy's glorious skies--the poet whose soul glowed with enthusiasm, and on whose lips inspiration trembled--the poet who sought the essence of the divinity in the least flower, and who saw the glory of his maker reflected in the countenance of each human being. this goethe it was who spoke these cheering, encouraging words. he addressed them to philip moritz, with whom he had been living in rome, and other parts of italy, for the last two years, and with whom he had rejoiced and sorrowed in many pleasures and vicissitudes. they had both come to italy to make new men of themselves. goethe, to become himself again--to become the original, creative genius. moritz, to heal his heart-wounds, and refresh his mind with the wonders of art and nature that abound for every man, who has eyes to see, in italy--this land of art and poetry. philip moritz had eyes to see, and the woman he loved had begged him not to close them, not to shut out from his vision the treasures which the god of creation and the gods of art had so plentifully bestowed upon this favored land. marie von leuthen was the woman of his love, and she it was who had entreated him to go to italy, that he might recover from the wounds life had inflicted, his grief be healed, and hope restored to his heart. "go," she had said to him, "italy and art will be a healing balm for your wounds. recover from them, and return after two years, renewed in mind and constant in heart, and i will give you a joyful answer if you then ask me if i love you." philip moritz had journeyed to italy as she bade him. on arriving in rome he learned that goethe had been in the city for some time. moritz at once sought out his adored poet, and since then they had been close comrades. he admired and worshipped goethe, who tenderly loved the friend (who was often so gloomy, and whose merriment was often exaggerated), in spite of his peculiarities. together they visited the treasures of art in rome; together they made excursions to the neighboring villages and places of interest, on foot or on horseback, as the case might be. on an excursion of this kind to frascati, moritz had been thrown from his horse, and had his arm broken. goethe had nursed him like a brother; for long days and weeks he had been the sufferer's only consoler and associate. "i have just left moritz," he wrote on one occasion to madame von stein. "the bandages were to-day removed from his arm, and it appears to be doing well. what i have experienced and learned at the bedside of this sufferer, in the last two weeks, may be of benefit to us both in the future. during this period he was perpetually alternating between the greatest misery and the highest delight."[35] this "greatest misery" the poor hypochondriac had borne in silence. the "highest delight," he had shared with his happier friend, with goethe, the favorite of the gods. in the autumn they had both left rome, and gone out to castel gandolfo, to pay a visit to the house of a hospitable friend. many eminent poets and artists were sojourning at this charming place at that time. gayety and merriment was the order of the day. it was in vain that goethe endeavored to draw his friend moritz into this magic circle of enjoyment. it grieved him deeply to see his friend brooding over his studies, to see the sad and gloomy expression that rested on his features. goethe's entreaties and exhortations were at times successful in arousing him from this condition; but, after a short interval of forced gayety and mocking merriment, he would relapse into his ordinary state of silent melancholy. "let us live as god's children in his glorious world!" moritz raised his pale countenance from the book over which he had been brooding, and looked tenderly, and yet sadly, at goethe. "happy, enviable man," said he. "but who can feel and think as you do?" "you can, moritz, if you only try," cried goethe. "but, above all, tell me what burden is resting on your soul, and what these wrinkles on my friend's brow mean." "they mean that i have a sad presentiment," replied moritz, with a sigh, as he threw his book aside and rose from his seat. "i am angry with myself on this account, and i have sought to dispel this presentiment, but all to no purpose! the skies of italy are no longer serene, the whole world seems like a huge grave; of late, even rome's works of art have appealed to me in vain; my ear has been deaf to their sublime language." [illustration: goethe.] "but, speak out, growler, monster," cried goethe, impatiently, "what northern spleen has again penetrated your northern heart? what is the matter with you? what imps have taken up their abode in your brain? what crickets are fiddling in your ears, and transforming the author, the linguist, and the sage into a miserable, grief-stricken old woman, who shuffles along through god's beautiful world, and burrows in the ground like a mole, instead of soaring upwards to the sun like an eagle?" "corpo di bacco!" cried moritz, striking the table so furiously with his fists that he sent the books flying in every direction, and upset the ink-bottle, flooding his papers with its black contents. "corpo di bacco! enough of your ridicule and abuse! how dare you call me a miserable old woman, how dare you compare me with a mole? how dare you make yourself merry over my northern heart? you, above all, whose heart is a lump of ice, an extinguished coal, that even the breath of a goddess would fail to enkindle! if one of us is an iceberg, it is you, mr. johann wolfgang goethe! you are an iceberg, and your heart can never thaw again, but will remain coffined in an eternal winter. what do you know of the sufferings of a man who loves the fairest, the best, and the noblest of women, and who, tormented by terrible forebodings of her death, tears his own flesh with the serpent's tooth of care, and who is blinded by his grief to all the beauties of god's world!" "that is it," said goethe, heartily, "then i have attained my object. with the iron hammer of my abuse i have beaten on the anvil of your obdurate temperament until i have made the sparks fly and kindle a fire. that was all i desired, you overgrown, harmless child; i only called you an old woman in order to awaken the man in you, and i now beg your pardon a thousand times for this abuse. he who has seen the old shrews that infest the neighborhood of st. peter's, and has suffered from their visitations in the chiesa maria della pace, knows how terrible a creature such an old fright is, and how offensive it is to be compared to such a personage. i humbly beg your pardon, philip moritz, professor, sage, connoisseur of art, and first-class etymologist. but as for your presentiments and your fears that some evil may have befallen your sweetheart, permit me to say that they are only the vagaries of a lover who blows soap-bubbles into the air, and afterward trembles lest they should fall on his head as cannon-balls. why, in the name of all the saints, do you give vent to your yearnings in trumpet tones, and afterward consider them the death-song of your love? was it not agreed upon between you two lovesick children of affliction that these two years of your sojourn in italy should be a trial of your love and fidelity? was it not understood that you were not to exchange a single letter during this period?" "yes, that was our agreement," replied moritz. "marie would have it so; she wished to try me, to see whether i would remain faithful and constant in love, even among the glories of italy." "well, then! what is it that oppresses you? what do these lamentations signify? what are you afraid of?" "do not laugh, goethe," murmured philip moritz. "i will tell you, a dream has tormented and alarmed me; a dream that has returned to me for three successive nights. i see marie lying on her couch at the point of death, her cheeks pale and hollow, her eyes dim and fixed; old trude kneels at her side wringing her hands, and a voice cries in my ear in heart-rending tones: 'philip, my beloved philip, come! let me die in your arms.' this is the dream that has haunted me for three nights; these are the words that have each time awakened me from sleep, and they still resound in my ear when i am fully aroused." "dreams amount to nothing," said goethe, shrugging his shoulders, "and your faith in them proves only that cupid transforms even the most sensible men into foolish children, and that the wanton god can make even sages irrational." "i would he made you so, you mocker at love and marriage," rejoined moritz, grimly. "i would like to see you a victim of this divine madness. i trust that cupid, whom you deride, will send an arrow into your icy heart and melt it in the flames of infinite love-pains and heaven-storming longings! i hope to see you, the sage who has fled from all the living beauties, from all the living women here in italy, as though they were serpents of eden--i hope to see you compelled by one of them to eat of the apple, and experience the dire consequences! i hope--" "hold, rash mortal!" said goethe, interrupting him, with a smile. "you know that children and fools often speak the truth, and that their prophecies often become realities. it is to be hoped an all-kind providence will preserve me from a new love, from new flames. no, the fires of love have been extinguished in my heart; in the warm ashes of friendship that still remain, a spark may sometimes glimmer sufficiently to enable me to read the name of my beloved friend, charlotte von stein, engraven therein." "warm ashes of friendship, indeed!" observed moritz, in mocking tones. "a sorry tenant for the heart of the poet of werther." "really," cried goethe, "i believe this fellow would be capable of imploring the gods to visit a 'werthercade' upon me." "i not only would be capable of doing so, but i really will do so," rejoined moritz. "i entreat the gods to bless and curse you with a heaven-storming, bliss-conferring and annihilating love, for that is all that is wanting to drive the last vestiges of humanity out of you, and make of you a demi-god with a halo of love-flames around your semi-divine head. yes, wolfgang goethe, poet by the grace of god, to whom the immortal have vouchsafed the honor of creating an 'iphigenia' and an 'egmont'--yes, i hope that a glowing, flaming, and distracting love, may be visited upon you!" "that you should not do," said goethe, gently, "let me make a confession, moritz: i believe that i am not capable of such a love--am not capable of losing my own individuality in that of another. i am not capable of subjecting all other thoughts, wishes, and cravings, to the one thought, wish, and craving of love. perhaps this was at one time my condition, perhaps my werther spoke of my own life, and perhaps this tragedy was written with the blood of my heart, then bleeding for charlotte kästner. but you perceive that i did not shoot myself like werther. i have steeled my heart since then to enable it to rely on its own strength, and to prevent its ever being carried away by the storm of passion. i am proof against this, and will ever be so!" "to be in rome!" exclaimed moritz, "in rome, with a heart void of all save the ashes of friendship for charlotte von stein, and to remain cold and indifferent to the most beautiful women in the world!" "that is not true, that is calumny!" said goethe, smiling. "my heart is not cold, but glows with admiration and love for the noblest and loveliest woman, for the goddess of beauty, chastity, and virtue. she was my first love in rome, and will be my only love. i yearned for her until she at last yielded to my entreaties, and took up her abode in my poor house. yes, i possess her, she is mine! no words can give an idea of her, she is like one of homer's songs!"[36] "i would like to know," cried moritz, in astonishment, "yes, really, i would like to know of whom you are speaking!" "i am speaking of her," said goethe, pointing to a colossal bust of the juno ludovisi, that stood on a high pedestal in a corner of the room. he approached the pedestal, looked up into the proud and noble countenance of the chaste goddess, and greeted her with a radiant smile. "i greet you, mysterious goddess, on whose brow love and chastity are enthroned! when i behold you i seem to hear words of revelation, and i then know that you reflect all that the fancy of the poets, the researches of the learned, and the piety of priests, ever thought or depicted that is sublime and beautiful. you are the blessing-dispensing isis of the egyptians, the venus aphrodite, and mother mary, all in one, and i stand before you in pious awe, adoring, loving and--" "holy mary! holy januarius!" screamed a voice from the doorway, and a woman, in the picturesque dress of an italian peasant, rushed into the room. "signori, signori, a wonder, a miracle!" "what do you mean, signora abazza?" asked goethe, laughing, as moritz, alarmed by the old woman's screeching, withdrew hastily to the window recess. "what do i mean?" repeated the old woman, as she sank breathlessly into a chair. "a miracle has occurred, signori! my cat is praying to god the father!" "how so, signora?" asked goethe, while moritz had abandoned his retreat and was slowly approaching the old woman, curiosity depicted in his countenance. "i mean just what i say, signori! i went to your bedchamber to make up the bed, and the cat accompanied me as usual. suddenly i heard a whining and mewing, and when i looked around, supposing she had hurt herself in some way, i saw her--but come and look yourselves. it is a miracle, signori! a miracle!" she sprang up, rushed to the door of the bedchamber, opened it, looked in, and beckoned to the two friends to approach. "softly, softly, signori; do not disturb her!" goethe and moritz walked noiselessly to the door, and looked into the adjoining room. there, on the antiquated wardrobe, opposite goethe's bed, and illumined by the sunlight that poured in through the broad window, stood the colossal bust of the almighty jupiter. in front of this bust, full of beauty and regal composure, stood madame abazza's gray cat, upright on her hind feet. she had laid her forepaws on the god's broad breast, and stretched her neck so that she could gaze into his majestic countenance, and touch with her tongue the lips with their godlike smile, and the beard with its curling locks. she kissed his divine lips ardently, and zealously licked his curly beard, stopping now and then to gaze for a moment at his royal countenance, and to utter a tender, plaintive mew, and then renewing her attention to beard and lips. goethe and moritz looked on with smiling astonishment, the old woman with pious dismay. "come to me, pussy," cried the signora at last; "come to me, my little pet, i will give you some milk and sugar; come!" but call and entreat as she would, the cat would not allow herself to be disturbed in her devotions, not even when goethe walked heavily through the room and stepped up to the wardrobe. she continued to kiss the god's lips and beard, and to utter her plaintive mews. signora abazza, who was standing in the door-way, with folded hands, now protested that the cat sang exactly like father ambrose when he officiated at the morning mass, and that her heart, the signora's, was filled with pious devotion. "i must, however, bring this cat-mass to an end," cried goethe, laughing, "for if the cat continues her devotions much longer, another miracle will take place: the divine locks will dissolve, and the lips, so expressive of wisdom and majesty, will be nothing more than shapeless plaster. halloo! father cat, away with you! you shall not transform the god into a lump of plaster!" with threatening tones and gestures he frightened the cat down from the wardrobe, and drove her out of the room. goethe and his friend then returned to the parlor. "wonders are the order of the day," said moritz, thoughtfully, "and we are surrounded by a mysterious atmosphere of dreams and tokens." "only when we are dreamers," cried goethe, laughing. "to the unbiassed there is nothing miraculous, to them all things seem natural." "how can you explain the cat's rapturous devotion?" "in a very prosaic, pitiful manner," replied goethe, smiling. "you know, exalted dreamer, that this bust was moulded but a few days ago, and you also know that grease was used to prevent the plaster from adhering to the form. some of this grease remained in the cavities of the beard and lips; the cat's fine sense of smell detected its presence, and she was endeavoring to lick it off."[37] philip moritz raised his arms, and looked upward with comic pathos: "hear this mocker, this cold-hearted materialist, ye eternal, ye sublime gods! punish the blasphemer who mocks at his own poetic genius; punish him by filling his cold heart with a lost passionate love! cast down this proud poet in the dust, in order that he be made aware that he is still a mortal in spite of his poetic renown, and that he dare not attempt to hold himself aloof from human love and human suffering!--venus aphrodite, pour out the lava streams of your passion on this presumptuous poet, and--" "hold, hold!" cried goethe, laughing, as he seized his friend's arms, and forcibly drew them down. "you remind me of thetis invoking the wrath of the great zeus upon the head of the son he believed to be guilty, and to whom the god granted his cruel prayer." "signori, signori!" cried signora abazza from the outside. "come in, come in, signora! what is the matter this time?" "signore zucchi has arrived from rome with his divine signora," said the old woman, appearing in the doorway, "they inquired at the post-office for your letters and papers, as they promised to do, and here is the mail signora angelica has brought you." goethe hastily opened and examined the sealed package which she had handed him. "newspapers! newspapers!" exclaimed he, throwing the folded papers on the table. "i am surrounded by living nature, what care i for lifeless newspapers." "you will not read them?" said moritz. "you have no desire to learn what is taking place in the german empire, to learn whether the emperor has undertaken another campaign against presumptuous prussia or not?" "no, i wish to know nothing of war," said goethe, softly. "i am a child of peace. i wish eternal peace to the whole world, now that i am at peace with myself."[38] "then permit me, at least, to interest myself in these matters," said moritz, taking one of the papers from the table and opening it. with a cry of joy goethe picked up the three letters that fell to the floor. "two letters for me! a letter from my charlotte, and one from my dear friend, herder! and here is a letter for you, friend moritz." "a letter for me!" said moritz, clutching and hastily opening the letter goethe held in his extended hand. "who can have written to me?" "read, my friend, and you will see. i will first read herder's letter, it probably contains his opinion of my 'egmont,' which i sent him some time ago." he seated himself at the little table, opposite moritz. both were soon busily reading, and goethe was so completely absorbed in his letter that he did not notice how pale moritz had become, and how the letter trembled in his hands; nor did he hear the deep sighs that escaped his lips. "i knew these fault-finders would not understand my clärchen; they demand another scene, explaining her relation to egmont. another scene! where am i to introduce it? where?" "goethe," said moritz, rising and handing the letter, which he had read again and again, to his friend, "goethe, read this, and then laugh at my dreams and presentiments, if you can." "what is it?" asked goethe, looking up. "but what is the matter with you, my friend? how pale you are, and how you tremble! tears in your eyes, too! have you received bad news?" "i have," groaned moritz. "marie is ill. read!" goethe took the letter and hastily glanced over it. it was from professor gedicke in berlin; he announced that marie leuthen had been ill for some time; that she had, at first, concealed her illness, but now admitted it, and expressed an ardent desire to see moritz. the physician had given it as his opinion that a reunion with her lover after so long a separation would have a beneficial effect on his patient, and infuse new life into her being; it was therefore considered desirable that moritz should speedily return to germany and berlin, to restore health and happiness to his beloved. "strange, truly strange!" said goethe. "your dream is being fulfilled, your presentiment has become reality." "fearful reality!" groaned moritz. "marie will die, i shall not see her again!" "no, oh no," said goethe, endeavoring to console him. "you take too gloomy a view of things; your fancy conjures up horrible visions. you will see her again. the magical influence of your presence, the heavenly fire of your love, will save her. women are generally such sensitively constituted beings that all ordinary laws are set at defiance when they love. they die of love, and they live on love. marie is ill because she longs to be with you; she will recover when she once more beholds you, and reads love and fidelity in your countenance." "marie will die!" groaned moritz. "god grant that i may, at least, arrive in time to kiss the last death-sigh from her lips!" "you are then about to take your departure? you will leave italy and return to germany?" moritz shrugged his shoulders. "truly, goethe, in this question i see that your heart is cold and loveless. i leave here within an hour!" goethe extended both hands, and his eyes shone with deep sympathy, as he gazed lovingly into his friend's pale countenance. "moritz, i am not cold and not loveless. i understand you. i appreciate your grief. i know that you must leave me, and must answer this call. do not misunderstand me, my friend, and when i subdue the holy flames, that glow in your soul and my own, with the prose of every-day life, remember that i have eaten much bitter fruit from the tree of knowledge, and that i anxiously avoid being poisoned in that manner again. but a blasphemer i am not, and be it far from me to desire to shake your resolution. love is the holy god who often determines our thoughts and actions, and love it is that calls you! go, my friend, answer this call, and may love console and give you heavenly delight. go! i will assist you in getting ready! we will go to work at once! the stage leaves here for rome in a few hours, and you will arrive there in time to take the mail-coach for milan this evening." goethe assisted his friend in preparing for his departure with such tender solicitude that moritz's eyes filled with tears at the thought of separation from his dear companion. angelica kaufmann, the celebrated painter, who had now been married to the artist, tucchi, for some months, sent twice to her friend goethe inviting him to take a walk, but in vain. it was in vain that a merry party of artists, who were sojourning in castel gandolfo, sang beneath goethe's window, and entreated him to join them in an excursion to the mountains, where they proposed to draw, paint, and amuse themselves till evening. goethe let them go without him and remained with his friend, endeavoring to console and encourage him. when the trunk was entirely packed, goethe quietly slipped a well-filled purse into the tray, hastily locked the trunk, and handed the key to moritz. "all is now ready, my friend. listen how our friend, the stage-driver, is cracking his whip and giving vent to his impatience, at the delay we have caused, in his charming italian oaths. we will promise him a gratuity, as an incentive to make him drive rapidly, to ensure your arriving in rome in time for the mail-coach." "may heaven grant that i arrive in berlin in time to find marie still living! this is all i crave! you see life has made me humble and modest; my life has been rich in misfortunes and poor in joys. i found two beautiful blossoms on my journey: marie's love and goethe's friendship. but i will lose them both; death will tread the one of these blossoms under foot, and life the other." goethe laid his hand gently on moritz's shoulder, and gazed into his countenance in deep emotion. "what fate has determined concerning the blossom of your love, that we must await with composure and resignation, for death is an almighty king, before whom the haughtiest head must bow in reverence. but the blossom of friendship which we have so tenderly nurtured, and which has so often cheered and refreshed our hearts--that blossom we will preserve and protect from all the storms of life. you may be right in asserting that the flames of love are extinguished in my heart, but the light of friendship is still burning brightly there, and will only expire with my death. be ever mindful of this, and, although you suppose me to be a cold lover, you shall never have cause to consider me a cold friend. let this be our farewell; ever bear this in mind." "this thought will console and encourage," said moritz, his eyes filling with tears. "all that i have enjoyed in these last few years that was good and beautiful, i owe to you, and have enjoyed with you alone! farewell, my pylades! i feel that, like orestes, i am being pursued by furies, and driven out into the world, to death and to despair! farewell, goethe!" they clasped each other in a long embrace, and then goethe led his friend down to the stage in silence. he gave the angry driver a gratuity, and pressed his friend's hand warmly in a last farewell. chapter ix. leonora. goethe stood for a long time on the steps in front of the house, following with his gaze the departing stage, and listening to the jingling of the little bells with which the horses were adorned. when this also had finally become inaudible, goethe turned slowly, a deep sigh escaping his lips, and reëntered the house. but his apartments seemed bare and solitary, and even the drawings and paintings which had usually afforded him so much pleasure, were now distasteful. he impatiently threw brush and palette aside and arose. "this solitude is unendurable," he murmured to himself, "i must seek company. i wish i knew where my merry friends have gone, i would like to follow them and take part in their merrymakings. but they will all have gone, not one of them will have been misanthropical enough to remain at home. i shall probably have to content myself with the society of signora abazza and her cat." with rapid strides he passed down the broad marble steps and out into the garden. here all was still and solitary. no human forms could be seen in the long avenues, bordered on either side with dense evergreen. no laughter or merry conversation resounded from the myrtle arbors. in vain the wind shook down the ripe fruit from the orange trees, the merry artists were not there who were in the habit of playing ball with the golden fruit. in great dejection goethe moved leisurely down the avenue which led to the large pavilion, built on a little hill at the end of the garden, and commanding a magnificent view of lake albano and its wooded shores. goethe walked slowly toward this point, regardless of his surroundings of the marble statues that stood here and there in niches hewn out of the dense evergreen, and of the murmuring of the neighboring cascades. the study of nature in all its details usually afforded him great enjoyment. he sought out its mysteries as well in mosses, flowers, and insects, as in the tall cypress, the eagle, and the clouds. but to-day, nature with all its beauties was unheeded by the poet, he was thinking of his absent friend; the words of separation still resounded in his ear. his mind was burdened with an anxious feeling like a presentiment of coming evil. but goethe was not the man to allow himself to be weighed down by sadness. he suddenly stood still, threw back the brown locks from his brow with a violent movement of the head, and looked around defiantly. "what misery do you wish to inflict on me, hollow-eyed melancholy," cried he, angrily. "where do you lie concealed? from behind which hedge have you fastened your stony gaze on me? away with you! i will have nothing to do with you; you shall not lay your cold, damp hand on my warm human heart. i will--" he suddenly ceased speaking, and looked up at the pavilion, astonishment depicted in his countenance. in the doorway of the pavilion, facing the garden, stood two girlish figures. a ray of sunshine penetrated the open window at the other end of the hall and illumined this door-way, surrounding these figures as with a frame of transparent gold, and encircling their heads with a halo of light. the one was tall and slender; the dark complexion, the brown cheeks, slightly tinged with crimson, the purple lips, the delicately-curved nose, the large, sparkling black eyes, the glossy black hair, and an inexpressible something in her whole appearance and expression, betrayed the roman maiden, the proud daughter of the cæsars. the young girl who stood at her side was entirely different in appearance. she was not so tall, and yet she was as symmetrical in form as the goddess ascending from the waves. her light hair fell in a profusion of ringlets around the brow of transparent whiteness, and down over the delicate shoulders that were modestly veiled by her white muslin dress. her large black eyes were milder than, but not so luminous as, those of her companion; her delicately-formed cheeks were of a rosier hue; an innocent smile played about her purple lips, and illumined her whole countenance. her lovely head rested on her companion's shoulder, and when she raised her right arm and laid it around her neck, the loose sleeve fell back and disclosed an arm of dazzling whiteness and rare beauty. they stood there in silence, surrounded by a halo of sunshine, looking dreamily around at the garden with its variegated autumnal hues. at the foot of the hill on which the pavilion was situated, stood goethe, his countenance radiant with delight, feasting his eyes on this charming picture. "apollo himself must have sent me this divine picture. i will engrave it deeply on my heart, that it may some day find utterance in living, breathing poetry. ye are the fair ones of whom my soul has of late been dreaming, whenever torquato tasso's image arose before my imagination. i will make you both immortal, at least in so far as it is given to the poet to make aught immortal. apollo, i thank thee for this apparition! these are my two princesses, my two leonoras, and here stands tasso, looking up to them with enraptured adoration! but, o ye gods, harden my heart against the flames of love, preserve me from tasso's fate!" "signor goethe!" exclaimed the roman maiden, who had just perceived the poet standing at the foot of the hill, as she stepped forward to the head of the stone stairway that led up to the pavilion. she stood there bowing her head in greeting, and beckoning to him to come up, while the fair-haired girl remained in the door, smiling at her friend's eager gestures. "come up, signore; mother is in the pavilion, and a party of friends will soon join us here; we shall then play and be merry." "yes, we shall play and be merry," cried goethe, as he rushed up the steps, and extended his hand to the fair friend who awaited him. "a greeting to you, beautiful amarilla, and many thanks for your kind invitation." signora amarilla grasped his hand cordially, and then turned to her friend, "leonora--" "leonora!" repeated goethe, startled, "the signora's name is leonora?" signora amarilla looked at him with astonishment. "yes, leonora. and why not? is this name so remarkable, so unheard of?" "no, not exactly that, and yet it is a remarkable coincidence that--" in her animation, amarilla took no notice of the words schiller had murmured, but ran to the door, grasped her friend's hand, and led her forward. the young girl seemed to follow her almost reluctantly; her lovely eyes were cast down, and a brighter color diffused itself over her cheeks. "leonora, this is the signore goethe, about whom i told you so much this morning--the signore who lives in rome, in the house adjoining ours, on the corso--the one to whom the artists recently gave the magnificent serenade that was the talk of all rome for three days. we supposed the signore to be a rich inglese, because he indulged in so costly a pleasure, but he tells us that he is only a poor german poet; this, however, i do not believe. but look up, leonora! look at the gentleman! he is an intimate acquaintance of mine, and i have already told you so much about him." while signora amarilla was laughing and speaking, with the unceasing fluency of tongue peculiar to the ladies of rome, leonora stood at her side, her eyes still cast down. goethe's gaze was fixed immovably on the beautiful vision before him. did his ardent gaze, or his glowing thoughts, exercise a magical influence over her? slowly she raised her head, and opened the large timid eyes, shaded with long black lashes, and looked at goethe. their glances met, and both started; the hearts of both beat higher. her cheeks glowed, his turned pale. he felt as though a whirlwind had arisen in his heart, and was carrying him he knew not where, either heavenward or into an abyss. his head swam, and he staggered back a step; she grasped her friend's hand, as if to sustain herself. signora amarilla had observed nothing of this mute greeting and interchange of thought; she chatted away merrily. "now, signore goethe, permit me to introduce this young lady; you will have great cause to be thankful for the honor conferred on you. this is my dear friend signora leonora bandetto. her brother is the confidential clerk in the business establishment of mr. jenkins. he was very homesick, and longed to be with his family in milan. as he could not conveniently leave rome, he begged that his sister leonora might be permitted to come on to live with him and take charge of his household. the most beautiful daughter of milan came to rome in answer to this appeal. i made her acquaintance at a party at mr. jenkins's, and we became friends. we love each other tenderly, and i stormed signore bandetto with entreaties until he consented to lend me his sister for a few weeks. leonora came to castel gandolfo to-day, and will spend two weeks with us, two heavenly weeks. this is the whole story, and now let us go into the pavilion." she tripped gayly toward the door, leading her friend by the hand; goethe followed them slowly, his breast filled with strange emotions. at the entrance they were received by signora amarilla's mother, who was surrounded by a number of young ladies who had just arrived. several young gentlemen, artists and poets, soon joined the party; the little pavilion was now the scene of great gayety. laughter and jesting resounded on all sides; and, finally, the game of lotto, the favorite game of the romans, and the occasion of this little gathering, was commenced. poor moritz, poor friend, who is journeying toward rome in sadness, it is well that you cannot look back at this scene! it is well that you cannot see the friend for whom your heart is sorrowing, seated between the two lovely women, between amarilla and leonora, laughing and jesting with the former, but having eyes and thoughts for leonora only! it is well, poor moritz, that you cannot see goethe's eyes kindling with rapture, and his countenance radiant with enthusiasm, as he laughs and jests, the youngest among the young, the gayest among the gay! it is now signora amarilla's turn to keep the bank. goethe is her partner; he divides his money and winnings with her, but the losses he bears alone. the beautiful amarilla's mother, who is seated in front of them on the other side of the long table, looks on with great content, laughs heartily at signore goethe's jokes, and rejoices at the bank's success, because her daughter's little treasure increases. but a change comes over her countenance, her dark eyes no longer sparkle with delight. this change is evidently owing to the fact that signore wolfgang goethe has dissolved the partnership that existed between himself and her daughter; he tendered his services as partner to leonora, and is accepted. not being familiar with the game, she allows goethe to guide and direct her. she is fast losing her timidity, and is already conversing quite gayly and confidentially with the signore who eagerly gratifies all her little wishes. the right to keep the bank now passed from leonora to her neighbor. goethe, however, did not offer to be her partner too, but quietly retained his place between the two lovely girls. while amarilla, with all the animation of her southern nature, gave her exclusive attention to the game, while all the players were anxiously listening to the numbers as they were called out, and covering them on their cards with little squares of glass, goethe sat leaning back in his chair, gazing into the beautiful countenance of his neighbor, who no longer desired to take part in the game, but preferred to cease playing, as she told goethe naively, rather than run the risk of losing the two scudi she had already won. "signore, we must not tempt fortune," said she, as she raised the little coins, which amounted to two scudi in value, in her delicate little hands, and then let them fall one by one into her lap. unconscious of what she was doing, she continued to play with the little bajocchi and paoli, raising and letting them fall again and again into her lap. goethe smilingly regarded the beautiful hands as they toyed with the little coins, and thought of correggio's celebrated painting of danaë and the shower of gold. the thought occurred to him: "it is well that the gods no longer roam the earth tempting innocence with such a shower! could this lovely child also have been ensnared by the shower of gold?" "you laugh, signore," said leonora, looking earnestly at goethe; "you laugh, but it is, nevertheless, true! we must not tempt fortune; we are sure to suffer when we confide in fortune." "is fortuna so bad a goddess?" asked goethe, smiling. "fortuna is no goddess," replied leonora, earnestly; "fortuna is a demon, signore. she is the daughter of the tempter who spoke to the mother of mankind in the garden of eden. if we listen to her words and allow ourselves to be ensnared by her allurements, our good thoughts vanish, and we are led astray." "you calumniate the noble goddess, signora. you are doubly unjust to fortuna; has she not smiled on you to-day, and are not your thoughts good and innocent?" "i, myself, am a proof that she is a temptress, a demon," said leonora, eagerly, but in a subdued voice. "i will tell you my thoughts, signore; there is something in your eyes that compels me to confess the truth. listen, signore. when i, thanks to your good advice and skill, had won the first few paoli, i rejoiced over my fortune and thought to myself: 'i will give these to theresa, the old woman i see on the steps of the santa marie della pace, every morning when i attend mass at this church.' old theresa invariably stretches out her withered, trembling hand, and i am so rarely able to give her any thing, for my brother is not rich, signore, and we are compelled to economize his earnings. it always grieves me to have to pass by the poor woman without giving her any thing. i rejoiced over the first few paoli i had won, calculating that i could have them changed into copper coins and give theresa one each day for a whole week. at this moment you handed me a few more paoli, telling me that i had already won an entire scudo. but what followed! old theresa's image vanished from my heart; it occurred to me that my brother had recently wished for a new cravat, and that i could now purchase it with my scudo. you are laughing at me, signore, are you not? you are right; it is very bold in me to impart my foolish, girlish thoughts to so wise a gentleman as yourself." "no, signora, i am not laughing at you," said goethe, in such tender tones that she looked up in surprise and listened attentively, as though his words were sweet music. "i was only amused because your own words rebutted your accusations against fortuna. the goddess has awakened good thoughts only in your bosom!" "but i have not yet finished, signore! only wait a little! my old beggar-woman was forgotten, and i had determined to devote my scudo to the purchase of the silk cravat for my brother. but i won, again and again, and you poured the little paoli into my hand, and observed laughingly: you are now rich, signora, for you have already won more than two scudi! your words startled me; i now heard a tempting voice whispering in my breast: 'play on, leonora; play on. win one more scudo, and then you will have enough to buy the coral earrings you recently admired so much, but were unable to buy. play on, leonora; win money enough to purchase this jewelry.' i was about to continue playing, thinking neither of the old woman nor of my brother, but only of my own desires. but i suddenly remembered the last words my confessor, father ignatio, had spoken to me in milan when i took leave of him. he said: 'my child, when you hear the tempter's voice, pray for strength to resist his allurements;' and i did pray, signore. while we were praying, i vowed to the holy virgin that i would not purchase the jewelry, but would expend my scudi for my brother and my poor old theresa only. i will keep my vow. now you will admit that fortuna is a demon, a daughter of the temptress who spoke to our mother eve, and was the cause of the expulsion of mankind from paradise, will you not?" goethe did not reply; with an inward tremor that was inexplicable to himself, he gazed at the lovely being whose cheeks were flushed with animation, and whose countenance shone with the holy light of purity and innocence. her sweet voice still rang in his ear after she had ceased speaking. "confess, signore!" repeated leonora, eagerly. goethe gave her a look of infinite mildness and tenderness. "signora, you, at least, are still in paradise, and may the avenging angel with the flaming sword never touch the pure brow which the angel of innocence has kissed and sanctified." "we have finished, the game is at an end!" cried the imperious voice of amarilla's mother. in the bustle which ensued, leonora, who was listening breathlessly, failed to catch the words which goethe added in a low tone. the company had arisen from the table, and formed little groups in various parts of the pavilion. goethe had stepped to an open window and was looking out at the lake, that glittered in the last rays of the setting sun. suddenly a hand was laid heavily on his shoulder; he slowly turned and saw signora frezzi, amarilla's mother, standing at his side. her countenance was grave, her brow clouded, and the accustomed smile was wanting on her lips. "signore goethe, you are a stranger, and are, of course, not familiar with the usages of our favored land," said she, in subdued, reproachful tones. "have i sinned, signora?" asked he, gayly. "have i been guilty of an impropriety?" "yes, signore, you have, and as amarilla's mother, i must say that i cannot suffer the innocent child to be affronted." "but, signora," he asked, in alarm, "how can i have affronted your daughter?" "i will tell you, signore. you have known my daughter since your concert in rome, and, when we met here in castel gandolfo a week ago, you showed a disposition to cultivate her acquaintance. since then you have been her companion on all our walks and excursions. it is recognized as your right by all our friends and acquaintances, and no one would dream of attempting to take your place at her side. it is a good old custom for each young lady and gentleman to select a special friend during their summer sojourn in the country. it binds the young lady and gentleman who have associated themselves in this manner, to the most enduring and delicate attentions to each other until they return to rome, when, of course, all obligation ceases." "what impropriety have i committed?" "this impropriety, signore: for the last week you have been recognized by every one as the _amico_ of my daughter, and now, when you have scarcely made the acquaintance of her friend leonora, you transfer the attentions hitherto shown to my daughter to this young lady. this is not proper, signore, and i must request you--" "i have a request to make of you first, signora," said goethe, interrupting her in severe and imperious tones. "i must request you not to forget that i am a stranger, and cannot give up the customs and usages of my own country. in germany it is customary for gentlemen to be polite to all ladies. this, it seems to me, is better and more agreeable than to show exclusive attention and devotion to _one_ lady to the neglect of all others. you will have to permit me to pursue the course i deem the most proper." he left her side, and walked through the pavilion to the bay-window in which the two young ladies were standing. they both smiled as he approached. amarilla had just broken off a twig of blooming myrtle from the vine that clung to the lattice-work of the pavilion, and was fastening it in leonora's hair. she pointed proudly to her friend: "see how beautiful she is, signore! does she not look like the goddess of love with the flowers of love in her hair?" leonora blushed and turned her head hastily toward the open window. the myrtle fell from her hair to the floor, at goethe's feet. he stooped down and picked it up. his heart beat tumultuously, and a feeling of wondrous delight ran through his whole being as he handed it to amarilla to be replaced in leonora's hair. "how long will it be," said amarilla, smiling, as she again fastened the myrtle in her friend's hair; "how long will it be before i adorn this golden hair with a real bridal wreath!" she looked smilingly at goethe as she uttered these words, and this look made his heart quake. how composed this heart had hitherto been since his sojourn in italy! how carefully had goethe avoided awakening it from this state of dreamy repose! how sedulously had he avoided women, living only for art and nature! now, when he hardly knew that he had a heart, it suddenly beat tumultuously, and filled his breast with all the sweet sensations and stormy desires of former days! he was so astonished and bewildered by this revelation, that he was unable to take part in the conversation going on around him, or to appear indifferent to this charming girl. he left the pavilion and sought out the most solitary part of the park, where he walked to and fro for hours, listening to the sweet voices that were whispering in his soul. he smiled when he remembered how moritz had entreated the gods to melt his icy heart; his friend's wish was being gratified in a charming manner! "i thank you, ye eternal gods, for having accorded me this highest revelation of poetry here in italy; i thank you for having enkindled in my heart the holy flames of love. i laughed at you, venus aphrodite, and you are punishing the sinner with your sweetest wrath; you are permitting him to feel that undying youth is still glowing in his bosom. for love is eternal youth, and i love! yes, i love!" it was late at night, and his friends had long since retired to rest, but goethe was still walking to and fro in the gloomy avenues of the park--in the avenues in which the pious fathers of the order of the holy ignatius had formerly wandered, forming plans to divert the power and glory of the whole world into their hands. the palace that now belonged to the wealthy mr. jenkins had formerly been the summer residence of the general of this order. the monastery was situated at the other end of the park. pope urban had once walked arm in arm with his friend the jesuit general in these avenues, and together they had considered how they were to subjugate princes and nations, and make themselves masters of the world. goethe thought of this as he stepped into the main avenue, and saw before him the grand old palace. "truly," murmured he, "this is the work of the holy fathers. they have thrown a jesuit's cloak over the mischievous god. in this disguise, he has dogged my footsteps, and, while i fondly believed myself to be conversing with an honest priest on learned topics, this impudent knave has so bewitched me that i have abjured all wisdom, and am about to become a fool among fools." "but what is to come of this, you fool?" asked he of himself. "where is your love for this beautiful child to lead you?" he listened, as if expecting an answer from the night wind that rustled by. he looked up at the moon, to see if a solution of this mystery of the future could be found in its shining countenance. in his heart the mocking words of his own song were all the while ringing, singing, and laughing in low tones: "heirathen, kind, ist wunderlich wort, hör' ich's, möcht ich gleich wieder fort!"[39] he repeated these words again and again, as he slowly walked toward the house, endeavoring to convince himself that they embodied his own sentiments. but the moonbeams are strange sorcerers; over the glittering waters of the murmuring cascades, and in every open myrtle-blossom, he saw the countenance of a lovely girl, who seemed to greet him with her dark, starlike eyes, and whose golden hair encompassed her angel countenance as with a halo of beauty and innocence. goethe smiled, and whispered the following lines of the same song: "heirathen wir eben, das übrige wird sich geben!"[40] chapter x. a dream of love. strong and mighty, harnessed, and full of life, as minerva had sprung forth from the head of jupiter, had love suddenly arisen in goethe's heart. a single day had awakened it, a single night had sufficed to make it strong, mighty, and confident of victory. when goethe, after having passed a night of delightful dreams, left his apartments on the following morning, and repaired to the large saloon in which the jesuit general had formerly entertained his devout guests, and in which merry artists and men of the world, and joyous and beautiful women, were now in the habit of assembling, his countenance wore a glad smile. he had bravely resolved to permit himself to be borne onward on the seething, silver waves of feeling, regardless of whither they tended--satisfied that they would bear him to some one of the enchanted isles of bliss, on the fragrant shores of which two white arms would embrace him, and two radiant eyes would whisper wondrous music in his listening heart. he was alone in the large room. the artists had returned at a late hour from their excursion of the previous day, and had not yet left their apartments. angelica kaufmann, who, with her husband, the old painter zucchi, was always the first to take her seat at the breakfast-table, had to-day sent down word that she was tormented with headache, and would breakfast in her apartments. signora frezzi avoided the parlor, because she did not desire to meet goethe, whose abrupt behavior of the day before had offended her. the newspapers that had arrived yesterday were lying around on the little tables. goethe seated himself at one of these tables, and opened one of the large english papers which are so great a solace to the blue-eyed daughters of albion. two joyous, girlish voices interrupted his reading, causing him to throw his paper hastily aside, and sending the hot blood to his cheeks. the voices were those of amarilla and leonora, who had come from the park, and now entered the parlor. they were attired in simple morning dresses, and looked charming with their fresh, rosy cheeks, and the blossoming sprigs of pomegranate in their waving hair. amarilla's quick, roving eye detected goethe first, and she uttered a joyous greeting as she hurried forward with extended hands. leonora stood at a distance, but her smiling lips and the timid glance of her large eyes were more eloquent than amarilla's words could possibly be. he stepped forward and extended his hand to leonora, and, when she laid her little hand in his, timidly, and yet with an expression of childlike confidence, his soul exulted, his heart overflowed with joy, and his countenance beamed with delight. amarilla did not observe this, as she was busily engaged in pouring out the coffee at one of the tables. leonora turned pale under goethe's glances, blushed, and then turned pale again, and withdrew her hand with a quick, convulsive movement. she slowly raised her eyes, and looked at goethe so reproachfully, so anxiously, that a tremor of joy and emotion ran through his whole being. "be firm, my heart, do not yield so soon to this sweet enchantment! first inhale the fragrance of this purple blossom which we call love, before you pluck it and press it to your heart. be firm, and enjoy the pure delight of the dawning sunlight!" she glided slowly from his side, and now, when she stood at the table assisting amarilla, her anxious look vanished; the timid little dove felt safe under the protecting wing of the older and stronger dove; she had instinctively heard the rustle of the falcon's wings, but now that she was at the side of her sister dove she no longer feared. leonora smiled again, took part in the merry conversation which amarilla had begun with signore wolfgang, and seated herself at his side at the breakfast-table, which amarilla had arranged for the three. it was a beautiful morning; the fresh breeze wafted clouds of fragrance into the room through the broad, open glass doors; the rustling of the orange and myrtle trees, and the murmuring and plashing of the cascades, greeted the ear like soft music. to goethe, the two lovely girls between whom he sat seemed as bright and fair as the morning. their ingenuous conversation seemed to him more charming and instructive than any conversation he had ever had with the most intellectual women, or the greatest scholars on the most profound subjects. his attention was, however, chiefly directed to the fair daughter of milan, the maiden with the light hair, dark eyes, and the delicate, transparent cheeks--the maiden, whose countenance was but the mirror of her soul, the mirror in which her every thought and impulse was reflected. amarilla had taken one of the english newspapers, had folded it into a cap in imitation of the _fazzoletta_ of the albanian peasant-women, and placed it jauntily on her pretty head. she was dancing around in the room, and singing in a low voice to the melody of the tarantella, one of those little love-ditties which gush so harmoniously from the lips of italian maidens. "she flies about like the bee, sipping sweets from every blossom, and fancies the world a vast flower-garden, created only for her delight." "are you of that opinion, beautiful leonora?" asked goethe, with a tender glance. she shook her head slowly. "no," said she; "i know that both the bee and the flower are of but little importance in the great economy of the universe. i often think," she continued, in a low voice, and with a charmingly thoughtful air, "i often think that we poor, simple girls are nothing more in the sight of god than the bee and flower, and that it is immaterial whether we live or die." "you have too poor an opinion of yourselves," said goethe, in low and impassioned tones. "you do not know that the almighty sometimes takes pity on men, and sends an angel of innocence, grace, and beauty, to console the human soul and refresh the human heart. you do not know that you are such an angel to me!" she shook her lovely little head dissentingly. "i only know, signore, that i am a poor ignorant girl, and that i often long to cast off my stupidity, and be able to understand what wise men say. it is, however, not altogether my own fault that i am so stupid, that--" "you are unjust to yourself," cried goethe, interrupting her; "you should not confound the divine ignorance of innocence with stupidity." "i speak the truth only," rejoined leonora; "and you see that i am attempting to excuse myself by telling you that it is not wholly our own fault that we are so foolish and ignorant. our parents and instructors, in their anxiety for our welfare, fear to open our eyes, believing it best that a girl should learn and know nothing. they do not teach us to write, because they fear that we would do nothing but write love-letters; nor would they teach us to read, if it were not to enable us to use our prayer-books. we are scarcely taught to express ourselves well in our own language; and it occurs to none to have us instructed in foreign languages, and give us access to the books of the world."[41] "would you like to be able to read in these books of the world, leonora?" "i would give all i possess to learn english! whenever i hear mr. jenkins and my brother, or madame zucchi and her husband, conversing in english, it makes me feel sad, and a feeling of envy comes over me that i never experience at other times. see, signore, amarilla has made a _fazzoletta_ from one of these large english papers, and is skipping around with it on her head, while i--i would give every thing to be able to read and understand what is written in the papers, which i know bring us intelligence from the whole world." "you say you would give every thing to be able to read these papers? what will you give me if i teach you how to do so?" "do teach me," she cried, clapping her little hands joyfully; "oh, do teach me! i will be so thankful, so very thankful! you will make me so happy, and i know that you are noble and generous, and will find your best reward in having made a poor ignorant girl happy." "do you, then, really believe me to be so disinterested, signora?" asked goethe, gazing earnestly into her animated countenance. "no, leonora, you are mistaken in me! i am not so godlike as you suppose!" at this moment the ringing tones of amarilla's voice were wafted in from the terrace. she was singing to the charming air so well known to every italian maiden and youth, and so familiar even to the orange groves and flowers, because they have so often heard it resounding from the cooing, exulting lips of lovers: "io ti voglio ben' assai ma tu non pens' a me!" alarmed by the impassioned tones of goethe's voice, leonora turned her head quickly toward the terrace. she smiled when she saw amarilla skipping about from tree to tree, singing like a humming-bird, as she plucked a blossom or a sprig here and there, and arranged them into a bouquet. "see, signore," whispered leonora as she raised her delicate little hand and pointed to her friend. "i told you before that we were not taught how to write, for fear that we would write love-letters. see what we poor ignorant girls resort to when we wish to write a love-letter. instead of using the letters of the alphabet we take flowers, that is the whole difference." "do you mean to say that amarilla is writing a love-letter with her flowers?" "be still, do not betray her, signore. look down, that no profane glance may desecrate the letters which god and the sun have created!" "but i may look at that young man who is stealing out from behind the evergreen-hedge, may i not?" "of what young man are you speaking?" asked leonora, in alarm. "of the young comaccini, who is cautiously peering through those bushes, and for whom the fragrant love-letter, which amarilla holds aloft so triumphantly, is probably intended." "no, do not look that way, signore," cried leonora, with an air of confusion, as she hastily took one of the papers from the table and handed it to goethe. "you said you would teach me to read these papers, to make out these difficult english words. please do so, signore. i will be a very thankful scholar!" goethe smiled as he took the paper and unfolded it. he had laid his left arm on the back of the chair, in which leonora sat; with his right hand he held the paper before her lovely countenance. he began to read and translate, word for word, the passage at which her rosy finger pointed. she listened with breathless attention, utterly unconscious that their heads were side by side, that her cheeks almost touched his, and that her fair, fragrant hair was intermingled with his brown locks. her whole soul was filled with the determination to impress each word that goethe uttered indelibly on her mind. her glances flew like busy bees from the paper to his lips, unconscious that they bore a sting which was infusing sweet poison into the heart of her zealous teacher. to be the teacher of a beautiful young girl is a dangerous office for a man who is young, and impetuous, and whose heart is not preoccupied. to read out of one book, cheek by jowl, so near to each other that the breath of his lips is mingled with hers, and that he can hear her heart's quick throbs--when has a woman done this with impunity, unless it was her lover or her husband with whom she was reading! francesca da rimini would not have been murdered by her jealous husband, if she had not read launcelot with her handsome brother-in-law paolo malatesta. "one day we were reading for our delight, of launcelot, how love did him enthrall; alone we were and without any fear, full many a time our eyes together drew, that reading, and drove the color from our faces; but one point only was it that o'ercame us, when as we read of the much longed-for smile, being by such a noble lover kissed, this one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. galeotto was the book and he who wrote it, that day no further did we read therein."[42] they too were reading for their delight, and were alone without any fear. amarilla sang and danced about on the terrace, and paid no attention to the two who were sitting so close together and studying the english newspaper so earnestly. the passage at which leonora pointed, chanced to be the simple, touching history of a young man and a girl who loved each other devotedly, but could not be united because the man was already married. the girl, unable to conquer her love, and yet tormented with remorse and anguish, had buried her love and her sorrows in the dark waters of the thames. her lover poisoned himself when he learned the sad intelligence, leaving a letter, in which he begged that they might be permitted to rest in one grave. leonora's attention was so entirely absorbed in the translation of the separate words that the meaning of what they were reading escaped her. in breathless excitement she listened to the words of glowing passion that fell from her teacher's lips, and stored them away in her memory, as newly-acquired precious treasures. she cried out with delight, when, after they had translated the passage for the second time, she succeeded in comprehending its meaning, and could render whole sentences and periods in her own language. she was so beautiful in her innocent joy, her countenance was so animated, her eyes so radiant, the smile on her lips was so charming, that a tremor of delight ran through goethe's being as he gazed at the fair creature. he said to himself that it must be enchanting to open the treasures of knowledge to this charming child of nature, and to learn from her while giving her instruction. they were still absorbed in the english lesson, and did not observe that the door was noiselessly opened, and that a young man with a merry countenance and bright smile appeared on the threshold. but, when he saw the two, seated side by side, shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek, she gazing fixedly at the paper, he regarding her with an expression of passionate tenderness--when the young man saw this, his merry expression vanished, and he cast a look of anger and hatred towards the readers. leonora had just succeeded in translating the whole narrative, unassisted by her teacher, and now uttered the concluding words in a loud voice: "they found it sweeter to die in love than to live without love!" the pale young man with the angry countenance slowly withdrew, closing the door as noiselessly as he had before opened it. they observed nothing of this, and continued reading until a number of their friends and acquaintances entered the room, when they laid the paper aside, with a sigh and a mutual look of regret and tenderness. the servants now appeared and were soon hastily engaged in preparing the breakfast table for the numerous guests who were sojourning in the house. angelica kaufmann, who had just entered the room on mr. jenkins's arm, stepped forward and greeted goethe, cordially, mildly reproaching him with having neglected and forgotten her. goethe replied to this reproach, but not in his usual gay and unrestrained manner, and her keen glance detected a change in his countenance. "one of the muses or goddesses of olympus has paid you a visit this morning," said she. "her kiss is still burning on your cheeks, and the heavenly fire is still flaming in your eyes. tell me, my friend, which muse or which goddess was it that kissed you?" "why must it have been an immortal woman, angelica?" asked goethe, laughing. "because no mortal woman can touch your hard heart. you know your friend moritz always called you the polar bear, and maintained that you had an iceberg in your breast instead of a heart. he was right, was he not?" "woe is me, if he was not, but is to be!" sighed goethe, thinking of the dire visitation moritz had called down upon his head. breakfast was announced, and the guests began to seat themselves at the table. the place of honor was generally conceded to be at goethe's side, mr. jenkins therefore requested angelica kaufmann to take the seat on goethe's right hand. while he was looking around, considering to whom he should accord the second place of honor on goethe's left, leonora stepped forward and quietly seated herself in the coveted place at her instructor's side. "i cannot separate myself from you, maestro," said she, smiling. "you must repeat, and explain to me, a few words of our lesson. only think, i have already forgotten the sentence which commences: 'sweet it is to die in love.'" angelica's astonished look convinced goethe that she had heard these words, and this confused him. his embarrassed manner, when he replied to leonora, betrayed to angelica the mystery of his sudden change of color when she had first spoken to him on entering the room. "i was mistaken," said she, in a low voice, and with her soft smile, "it was not a goddess or a muse who visited you. the god of gods himself has kissed your heart and opened your eyes that you might see." yes, these flaming eyes did see, and love had softened the poet's hard heart with kisses. his soul was filled with rapture as in the days of his first boyish love; every thing seemed changed--seemed to have become brighter and fairer. when he walked in the park with his friends after breakfast it seemed to him that his feet no longer touched the earth, but that his head pierced the heavens, and that he beheld the splendor of the sun and the lustre of the stars. he had gone to the pavilion, where he had first seen leonora, hoping to find her there now. amarilla had drawn her aside, after breakfast, and whispered a few words in her ear. goethe had seen her shudder, turn pale, and reluctantly follow her friend from the room. he hoped to find her in the pavilion. she was, however, not there; a few groups of ladies and gentlemen were standing at the open windows, looking at the beautiful landscape. goethe stepped up to one of these windows and gazed out at the lovely lake with its rippling waves and wooded banks. it had never before looked so beautiful. he did not view this picture with the eye of an artist, who desires to reproduce what be sees in oil or aquarelle, but with the eye of an enraptured mortal, before whom a new world is suddenly unfolded, a world of beauty and of love.[43] suddenly he heard amarilla's merry, laughing voice, and his heart told him that she also was near--she, the adored leonora! goethe turned towards the entrance. yes, there was leonora; there she stood on the threshold, at her side a young man, with whom she was conversing in low and eager tones. "here you are, signore goethe," cried amarilla, stepping forward. "we have been looking for you everywhere, we--" "signora," said goethe, interrupting her, and laying his hand gently on her arm, "pray tell me who that young man is with whom your friend leonora is so eagerly conversing?" "we have been looking for you to tell you this, and to make you acquainted with young matteo. he has come to tell leonora that the rich old uncle whose only heir he is, has suddenly died, and that no impediment to his marriage now exists." "what does it concern your friend whether this mr. matteo has grown rich, and can now marry or not?" "what does it concern her?" said amarilla, laughing. "well, i should think it concerned her a great deal, as she is betrothed to this mr. matteo, and their marriage is to take place in a week." not a muscle of his face quivered, not a look betrayed his anguish. he turned to the window, and stared out at the landscape which had before shone so lustrously in the bright sunlight. how changed! all was now night and darkness; a film had gathered over his eyes. while he stood there, immovable, transfixed with dismay, he observed nothing of the little drama that was going on behind him; he did not feel the earnest gaze of the two pairs of eyes that were fastened on him: the eyes of leonora, with tender sympathy; the eyes of the young man, with intense hatred. "i saw him turn pale and shudder," hissed matteo in leonora's ear. "it startled him to hear that you were my betrothed. it seems that you have carefully concealed the fact that you were my affianced, and about to become my bride?" "i have not concealed it, matteo, i had only forgotten it." "a tender sweetheart, truly, who forgets her betrothal as soon as another, perhaps a handsomer man, makes his appearance." "ah, matteo," whispered she, tears gushing from her eyes, "you do me injustice!" he saw these tears and they made him furious. "come now, and introduce me to this handsome signore," commanded matteo, grimly; "tell him, in my presence, that our marriage is to come off in a week. but if you shed a single tear while telling him this, i will murder him, and--" "step aside, signore, if you please," said a voice behind him; "step aside, and permit me to pass through the door-way." the voice was cold and composed, as was also the gaze which goethe fastened on the young man. he did not even glance at leonora; he had no words for the fair-haired girl, who looked up into his countenance so timidly and so anxiously. he passed out into the open air, down the steps and into the garden, leaving behind him her who but yesterday had seemed to him as the dawn of a new day, the glorious sunshine of a new youth--her, who to-day had cast a pall over his soul, and had cried into his sorrowing, quivering heart the last adieu of departing youth. he passed the confines of the park, strode rapidly into the forest and sought out its densest solitude. there, where the stillness was unbroken, save by the rustling of trees and the dreamy song of birds--there he threw himself on a bed of moss, and uttered a cry, a single, fearful cry, that made the forest ring, and betrayed to god and nature the mystery of the anguish of a noble, human heart, that was struggling with, but had not yet overcome, its agony. goethe did not return home from the forest until late in the evening. he retired to his room and locked himself in, desiring to see no one, to speak to no one, until he had subdued the demons that were whispering words of wild derision and mocking despair in his heart. he would not be the slave of passion. no one should see him until he had mastered his agony. early the next morning he again wandered forth into the forest with his portfolio under his arm; leaving a message at the house for his friends to the effect that they must not expect him back to dinner, as he had gone out to draw, and would not return till late in the evening. his friends, and _she_ above all, should not know what he suffered! the forest is discreet, the trees will not betray the poor child of humanity who lies at their feet struggling with his own heart. "i will not suffer, i will not bear the yoke! did i come to rome for any such purpose? did i come here to see my peace and tranquillity of mind burn like dry straw, under the kindling glances of a beautiful girl? no! i will not suffer! pain shall have no power over me! it will and shall be conquered! away with you, hollow-eyed monster! i will tread you under foot, will grind you in the dust as i would an adder!" he sprang up from his bed of moss, and stamped on the ground, furiously. he then walked on deeper into the forest, compelling himself to be calm, and to contemplate nature. "goethe, i command you to be calm," cried he, in stentorian tones. "i will collect buds and mosses, and choose butterflies and insects. help me, spirit of nature! aid me, benign mother. give me peace, peace!" with firmer tread, his head proudly erect, he walked on in the silent forest, still murmuring from time to time: "i will have peace, peace!" while goethe was struggling with his heart, in the depths of the forest, and striving to be at peace with himself, another heart was undergoing the same ordeal, in silence and solitude. the heart of a tender, young girl, who hoped to attain by prayer what the strong man was determined to achieve by the power of his will. she did not even know what it was that had so suddenly darkened her heart; she only felt that a change had taken place--that she was transformed into another being. an unaccountable feeling of anxiety had come over her--a restlessness that drove her from place to place, through the long avenues of the park, in search of solitude. she only asked herself this: what had she done to cause signore goethe to avoid her so studiously? why had he left the house so early in the morning, and returned so late in the evening, for the past three days? why was it that he conversed gayly with others when he returned in the evening, but had neither word nor look for her? these questions gave her no rest; they tormented her throughout the entire day. "what wrong have i done him? why is he angry with me? why does he avoid me?" she sat in the pavilion repeating the questions that had made her miserable for the last three days, when suddenly matteo, who had followed her, stepped forward and regarded her with such anger and hatred that she trembled under his glance like the dove under the claws of the falcon. "what is the matter with you, leonora?" he asked, gruffly. "why are you weeping?" "i do not know, matteo," murmured leonora. "please be patient with me, it will soon pass away." he laughed derisively. "you do not know! then let me tell you. you have no honor! you have no fidelity! you are a vile, faithless creature, and not worthy of my love." "how can you speak so, matteo? what have i done?" "i will tell you what you have done," he cried, furiously. "you have listened to the honeyed words of the tempter. be still, do not contradict me! i saw you seated together--he, breathing sweet poison into your heart; and you, eagerly inhaling it. i hate and despise him, and i hate and curse you! there! i hurl my engagement ring at your feet, and will never take it back again--no, never! we are separated! matteo will not stoop to marry a girl who has broken faith with him." "i--with you? matteo, that is false! that is false, i tell you." "false, is it?" he cried, furiously. "well then, swear by the holy virgin that your heart is pure; swear by all the saints that you love me, and that you do not love him, this signore goethe!" she opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words escaped her lips. her lovely features assumed an expression of dismay; she stared into vacancy, and stretched out her arms as if to ward off some horrible vision that had arisen before her. "speak!" cried he. "swear that you do not love him!" her arms sank helplessly to her side, and a deathly pallor spread over her countenance as she slowly, but calmly and distinctly murmured: "i cannot swear, matteo! i know it now, i feel it now: i do love him!" matteo responded with a cry of fury, and struck leonora with his clinched fist so forcibly on the shoulder, that she fell to the ground with a cry of pain. he stood over her, cursing her, and vowing that he would have nothing more to do with the faithless woman. with a last imprecation, he then turned and rushed out of the pavilion and down into the garden. all was still in the pavilion. leonora lay there with closed eyelids, stark and motionless, her countenance of a deathly pallor. a pale woman glided in through the open door, looked anxiously around, and saw the form of the poor girl extended on the floor. "she has fainted! i must assist her!" it was angelica kaufmann who uttered these words. she had been painting outside on the porch, had heard every word that was spoken in the pavilion, and now came to help and console the poor sufferer. she knelt down by her side; rested her head on her knees, drew a smelling-bottle from her dress-pocket and held it to the poor girl's nose. she opened her eyes and gazed dreamily into the kind, sympathetic countenance of the noble woman who knelt over her. "it is you, signora angelica," murmured leonora. "you were near? you heard all?" "i heard all, leonora," said the noble artiste, bending down and kissing her pale lips. "and you will betray me!" cried she, in dismay. "you will tell him?" "no, leonora, i will not betray you to any one. i will tell no human being a word of what i have overheard." "swear that you will not, signora. swear that you will keep my secret, and that you will not betray it to _him_, even though my life should be at stake." "i swear that i will not, leonora. have confidence in me, my child! i have suffered as you suffer, and my heart still bears the scars of deep and painful wounds. i have known the anguish of hopeless love!" "i too, suffer; i suffer terribly," murmured leonora. "i would gladly die, it would be a relief!" "poor child, death is not so kind a friend as to hasten to our relief when we call him! we must learn to endure life, and to say with smiling lips to the dagger when we draw it from the bleeding wound: 'paete, paete, non dolet!'" chapter xi. adieu to italy. writhing in agony for three days and three long nights, at length goethe found relief in the omnipresent balsam, all-healing nature! the poet-eagle was healed! the pinions of his soul had recovered from the wounds inflicted by cupid's envenomed arrow. six days of solitude, six days of restless wandering, six days of communing with god and nature, six days of struggling with his own weakness--these six days have made him six years older, taught him to conquer pain, and restored him to joyousness and confidence in himself. on the morning of the seventh day, goethe entered the room where his friends were assembled, and greeted them with all his former gayety and cordiality. no change was observable in his countenance, except that he had become a little paler, and that his large brown eyes looked still larger than usual. only once did an anxious expression flit over his countenance, and that was when he asked signore zucchi why his dear friend angelica had not come down to breakfast with her husband. "she is not here," replied zucchi. "she has been in rome for the past three days." "in rome?" repeated goethe, with astonishment. "we intended making an excursion together through the albanian mountains, and now she has left us! when will she return?" "that the physicians alone can tell you," replied zucchi. "is signora angelica ill?" asked goethe, with alarm. "oh, no, not she! but the young girl, the beautiful leonora, has suddenly fallen ill. angelica found her lying insensible on the floor of the pavilion. she interested herself in the poor girl, did all she could to cheer and console her, and even attempted to reconcile her to her affianced, from whom she had been estranged. leonora, however, declared that she would never marry young matteo--that she would become no man's wife, but would always remain with her brother. at her earnest request, angelica took her to rome, to her brother's house. she had hardly arrived there before she was taken violently ill with an attack of fever. she is in a very precarious condition, and angelica, instead of finishing the large painting for which an englishman has offered four thousand scudi, has made herself this poor girl's nurse." goethe had listened to this narrative in silence, his head bowed down on his breast. when zucchi ceased speaking, he raised his head, and cast a quick glance around the room. he saw gay and unconcerned countenances only. no one observed him--the story of his anguish was known to none of his friends. he also seemed to be perfectly quiet and composed--to be occupied solely with his paintings and drawings. when his friends suggested that the time had now arrived to carry out their projected tour through the albanian mountains, goethe declined to accompany them, telling them that an alteration which his friends in germany desired him to make in his "egmont," necessitated his speedy return to rome. goethe returned to the city on the evening of the same day, and repaired, immediately on his arrival, to the house of signore bandetto, to inquire after his sister's condition. she was still dangerously ill, and the physicians gave but little hope. signora angelica was with her, nursing her like a tender mother. he returned to the house for the same purpose later in the evening, and so on each ensuing day. gradually, the bulletins were more favorable, and he was told that she was steadily improving. goethe had been in rome for two weeks, and had neither written nor painted during this time; he had even avoided the gods of the belvidere and the holy halls of st. peter's. the wounds of his heart were not yet quite healed. leonora's illness still made them smart. to-day, he had again repaired to signor bandetto's house, had seen angelica kaufmann, and had been told that all danger was now over. a weight of care was removed from his soul, and he now entered his studio with a gay and unclouded countenance for the first time during his stay in rome. his studio was a scene of wild confusion; books, papers, drawings, chairs, and tables, were in the greatest disorder. the juno ludovisi's head was gray with dust, and the impious chambermaid had thrown the poet's dressing-gown over the figure of cupid, as though the god of love were a clothes-rack. goethe laughed loudly, laughed for the first time in long, long weeks, and relieved the poor god of his disgraceful burden. he then bowed profoundly, and looked intently into the mischievous god's smiling countenance, as if to defy him to do his worst. from this hour goethe was once more himself. all grief had vanished from his heart, and he was again restored to his former peace and gayety. he once more belonged to the gods and muses, to poetry and to nature. but, above all, to poetry! in the hours of his anguish the arts had not been able to rescue and strengthen him, but wondrous thoughts and sublime feelings had taken root in his soul. pain was overcome, as was also love. when he saw leonora, after her recovery, and when she thanked him, in faltering tones, for his sympathy, and his frequent inquiries during her illness, goethe smiled, and treated her as a kind father treats his child, or a brother his sister. she fully understood the meaning of this smile, and shed many bitter tears in her little room in the stillness of the night, but she did not complain. she knew that this short-lived passion had fallen from goethe, as the withered blossom falls from the laurel-tree, and that she would be nothing more than a remembrance in his life. this consciousness she wore as a talisman against all sorrow; the roses returned to her cheeks, her eyes once more shone lustrously, and never in her after-life did she forget goethe, as he never forgot her. the remembrance of this beautiful girl shone as a bright, unclouded star throughout goethe's entire life; and in the days of his old age, when the heart that had throbbed so ardently in rome had grown cold, goethe said and wrote of this fair girl: "her remembrance has never faded from my thought and soul." another painful awakening soon followed this short dream of love--the awakening from the dreamy, enchanting life in italy, the return to germany. it was a pain and a joy at the same time. the deep pain of separation from rome, and the joyful prospect of returning to his home and friends, and, above all, to his friend charlotte von stein? "it was for her sake that i conquered this passion," said goethe to himself. "i told her that i would return to her, unfettered in hand and heart, and i will keep my promise. charlotte's love, charlotte's friendship, shall console me for what i have denied myself here, for what i leave behind me! you, too, will be there, muses; you will follow me to the fatherland, and assemble lovingly around the poet in the little house in weimar. a poet i am; that i feel; of that i am now convinced. in the next ten years of work that will at the utmost be vouchsafed me, i will strive to accomplish, by diligent application, as much that is good and great as i achieved without hard study in the days of my youthful vigor and enthusiasm. i will be diligent and joyous! i will live, create, and enjoy, and that i can do as well in weimar as in rome! i will bear the italian heaven within me; i will erect 'torquato tasso' as a monument to italy and myself. farewell, sublime, divine roma! a greeting to you, you dear little city, in which the prince lives whom i love, and the friend who belongs to my soul. a greeting to you, weimar!" book iv. chapter i. the return. to-day is the anniversary of the birthday of the beautiful princess ferdinand, and is to be celebrated by a grand reception in the royal palace of berlin. the rank and fashion of berlin are invited. the ladies of the aristocracy are occupied with nothing but their toilette, this object of first and greatest importance to the fair creatures who form so marked a contrast to the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, and are yet so gorgeously arrayed. nor do these beautiful lilies of the parlor toil or spin; nor do they wait for the lord to array them, but take this care upon themselves, and make it an affair of state in their lives. to the countess moltke it is also an affair of state, and all the more so as her waning beauty demanded increased attention to the arts of the toilette. the rose-colored satin dress lies on the sofa, awaiting the garland of roses destined to encircle its skirt. her rich black hair is also to be adorned with a wreath of roses, for the countess has a decided penchant for them and fancies the color of her robe and flowers will be reflected in her countenance, and impart to it a youthful, rosy hue. the flowers had been ordered a week before at the establishment of marie von leuthen, the first manufacturer of them in the city, and the countess was now awaiting the return of the servant she had sent after them. for the past two years, and since the day on which she had opened her store on frederick street, marie von leuthen had furnished flowers for all the ladies of high rank in berlin. it was considered _bon ton_ to buy one's wreaths, bouquets, and garlands from her. no one arranged them so prettily as she, no one understood imitating nature in so beautiful and artistic a manner; moreover, it gave one the appearance of patronizing the unfortunate young woman, whose fate had been the all-engrossing topic of conversation in good society for an entire week. her flowers were also very dear, and it was therefore all the more honorable to be able to say: "i purchased them from madame von leuthen. true, she is exceedingly dear, but her work is good, and, moreover, it is a sort of duty to assist her with our patronage. she is, as it were, one of us; we have been entertained by her, and have enjoyed many agreeable evenings at her house." marie von leuthen had ceased to be a lady of fashion, but she had become the fashionable flower-manufacturer of the city, and, as we have already said, it was considered essential to adorn one's self from her establishment. madame von moltke was therefore not a little dismayed when the servant returned, and announced that the flowers were not ready, and that madame von leuthen begged to be excused for not having been able to furnish them. "but did you not tell her that i must necessarily have them?" asked the countess. "my lady, i not only told old trude so, but i reproached her violently for having accepted an order which her mistress could not execute; but the old woman shut the door in my face, and gave me no other answer than this: 'the flowers are not ready.'" "but they can perhaps still be got ready," said the countess. "probably she has a great deal of work on hand for this evening, and it will perhaps only be necessary to offer her a higher price in order to secure the preference above her other customers. let my carriage be driven to the door. i will see and speak with this inconsiderate person myself!" a quarter of an hour later the countess's carriage stopped in front of the store in frederick street, over the door of which was written in large letters: "marie von leuthen, manufacturer of flowers." the servant hurried forward to open the door, and the countess glided majestically into the store, and greeted the old woman, who advanced to meet her, with a proud, and almost imperceptible inclination of the head. "i wish to speak with madame von leuthen herself," said the countess, imperiously. "her ladyship, however, well knows that none of madame von leuthen's customers have had the pleasure of seeing her in the last two years," rejoined the old woman in sharp tones. "her ladyship, like all the other inquisitive ladies, has often attempted to see and speak with my mistress, but always in vain. madame von leuthen has neither time nor inclination to be chatted with or stared at. she does the work and i receive the orders. her ladyship must therefore have the goodness to say what she has to say to old trude." "i have come for my flowers," said the countess, angrily. "my servant tells me that he received the very impertinent message that they not only were not, but would not be, ready. i can, however, scarcely credit his statement, for i ordered these flowers myself, and when an order has been accepted, it must of course be filled at the proper time." "your servant told you the truth," replied old trude, in grumbling tones, "the roses will not be ready." "and why not, if i may be permitted to ask?" "certainly, why should you not ask? of course you may ask," rejoined trude, shrugging her shoulders. "the answer is: the roses have not been got ready, because madame von leuthen has not worked." "has your mistress then done so well that she is on the point of retiring from business?" asked the countess. trude raised her eyes with a peculiar expression to her ladyship's haughty countenance, and for a moment her withered old face quivered with pain. but this emotion she quickly suppressed, and assumed her former peevish and severe manner. "what does my lady care whether my little marie desires to retire to rest or not, or whether the good lord wills that she shall do so," said she, gruffly. "enough, the roses cannot indeed be ready, and if her ladyship is angry, let her scold old trude, for she alone is to blame, as she never even gave madame von leuthen your order." "this is, however, very wrong, very impertinent," cried the countess. "pray, why did you accept the order?" "true, that i ought not to have done," murmured the old woman to herself, "but i thought she would grow better, and instead--my lady," said she, interrupting herself. "i have nothing more to say, and must beg you to content yourself with my reply. no more flowers will be furnished to-day, and i will immediately lock the front door." "she is a rude person," cried the countess, angrily. "if she dares to insult those who assisted her impoverished mistress out of benevolence and pity, in this shameless manner, the consequence will be that her customers will withdraw their patronage and give her no more orders." "as you please, my lady," said old trude, sorrowfully. "but be kind enough to go, if you have nothing further to say." the countess gave the presuming old woman an annihilating glance, and rustled out of the store and into her carriage. trude hastily locked the door behind her, and pulled down the blind on the inside. "who knows whether i shall ever unlock this door again!" sighed she. "who knows whether she shall ever make flowers again!" the old woman sank down on a chair and burst into tears. she quickly dried her eyes, however, and assumed an air of gayety when she heard her name called in the adjoining room, and walked hurriedly into the apartment from which the voice had proceeded. "here i am, my little marie," said she, on entering; "here i am." she hurried forward to the pale lady, who was sitting in the arm-chair at the large round table. was that really marie? was this pale woman with the large lustrous eyes, with the hectic flush on her hollow cheeks--was this really that proud beauty who had laid aside rank and wealth with royal contempt--who with joyous courage had determined to create for herself a new life, and, after having avenged herself on her unworthy husband and her unnatural mother, had gone out into the world to earn a subsistence with the work of her hands? the figure of that woman had been tall and full--the figure of this woman was shrunken, and, in spite of the heavy woollen dress which she wore, it was evident that nothing of their former beauty and fulness remained to these shoulders, to these arms, and to this unnaturally slight figure. and yet, although this pale woman had retained so little of her former beauty, there was still an inexpressible, a touching charm in her appearance. disease had laid waste her fair form, but disease had not been able to deprive these eyes of their lustre, nor these cheeks of their rosy hue. to be sure, the same lustrous eyes and flushed cheeks were the fatal evidences of that disease which gives those whom it destroys the appearance of improvement, and permits them to hope until the last moment. her brow was clear and transparent, and a soft, tranquil smile rested oftener on her thin, delicate lips than formerly. true, her figure was thin and unattractive, but this attenuation gave to her appearance something spirituelle. when she glided lightly and noiselessly through the room, the thought would occur to you that she was not a woman of earth, but must really be one of those of whom we read in song and story--one who, for some fault committed in heaven, or in the realm of spirits, is compelled to descend to the earth to make atonement by learning to suffer and endure pain like mortals! she had been working flowers of every variety. roses and lilies, violets and forget-me-nots, tulips and pinks, and whatever else the names of these lovely children of the spring and sun may be, lay on the table in the greatest confusion. they were in the varied stages of completion, some half finished, and others wanting only a leaf or the stem. marie held a bunch of lilies in her delicate hand, and trude sighed when she observed it. it seemed to her that her darling looked like the angel of death, standing on the brink of the grave, and waving her lilies in a greeting to the new life that was dawning for the dying mortal! "trude, who was it i heard speaking in the other room, who spoke in such loud tones?" asked marie, as she leaned back in the arm-chair, as if exhausted by her work.--"why do you not answer? why do you not tell me who was there? good heavens!" she cried, suddenly, "it cannot have been--o trude, for god's sake, tell me, who was it? and if it was he, trude--if he has at last come, then--" "be still, marie!" answered the old woman, interrupting her, and assuming an air of gayety. "you are still the same young girl, just as impatient as ever! no, no, it was not he! it was only countess moltke, who wished to speak with you about a garland of roses." "countess moltke!" repeated marie, thoughtfully. "she, too, was present on that terrible day when--" "do not speak of it, do not think of it!" entreated the old woman. "you know the doctor told you that if you desired to grow healthy and strong again, you should lay aside all sad thoughts, and endeavor to be right cheerful." "i am cheerful, trude," replied marie, smiling. "each day brings him nearer, each fleeting hour shortens our long separation. i now bless the disease that attacked me two months ago, for, under the impression that i was about to die, you then did what i never would have done, you caused good professor gedicke to write to him and tell him to come home, as his marie was very ill. i thank you, good trude, for confessing this, and for giving me the blessed assurance that he will soon be here. but yet it was cruel to terrify and alarm him! i hope, however, that the professor has again written since then, and told him that all danger is over, and that i am very greatly improved!" "and he did so, marie; he wrote immediately after the receipt of his letter from rome, announcing his departure for home, and requesting that further intelligence, as to your condition, should be sent to him at the post-office in stuttgart. mr. moritz knows that all danger is over, and that you are doing well. you are certainly doing well, are you not, dear marie?" "yes, i am doing well, very well indeed, and better each day. i feel, at times, as though i had wings, and had flown high above the earth; when i look down, every thing seems small and indistinct, as though far away in the dim distance. you, however, are always near me, as is also his dear countenance; his large dark eyes are ever shining into my heart like two stars. i feel so happy when i see them--so light and free, that i seem to have bidden adieu to all earthly care and sorrow. only at times my eyes grow a little dim, and my hands tremble so when i wish to work, and then something pains me here in the breast occasionally! but this need not disquiet you, trude, it only pains a little, and it will soon pass away." "yes, indeed, it will soon pass away!" said trude, turning aside, and hastily wiping away the tears which rushed to her eyes in spite of her endeavors to repress them. "certainly, marie, you will soon be entirely restored to health and strength; this weakness is only the result of your long illness." marie did not reply, but cast a quick, searching glance at old trude's kind face, and then slowly raised her eyes toward heaven with an expression of earnest entreaty. but then a soft smile flitted over her countenance, and the ominous roses on her cheeks burned brighter. "yes, i will soon recover, trude," she said, almost gayly. "under such treatment i cannot fail to recover. you nurse me as tenderly as a mother nurses her child. and it is very necessary that i should, good trude, for our supply of flowers is almost exhausted, and our purse is empty. this is the case, is it not? you gave countess moltke no garland of roses because we had no more." "yes, such is the case, marie, if you must know. the roses are all sold, but that is easily accounted for, as no elegant lady is willing to wear any flowers but yours. you are quite right, marie, you must make haste and get well, so that you can make a fresh supply of beautiful roses. but, in order to be entirely restored to health, you must rest and do no work whatever for the next few weeks." "the next few weeks!" repeated marie, in a slightly mocking tone of voice. "the next few weeks! trude, that seems like an almost inconceivable eternity, and-but, good heavens! you do not believe that weeks will pass before philip comes?" "but why should i believe any thing of the kind, marie?" said the old nurse, in tranquillizing tones. "he left rome long ago, and mr. gedicke says we may expect him at any hour." "how pleasantly that sounds! what music lies in your words, trude!" sighed marie. "we may expect him at any hour! do you know, good trude, that i am still nothing more than a foolish child! i have been awaiting philip these two long years, and during this time i have always been joyous and patient, for i know that this separation was necessary, and would be a blessing to him i loved. 'before the roses bloom, the thorns grow, and we are wounded by them when we pluck the lovely flowers!' this i have constantly repeated to myself during these two long years, and have borne the pain which the thorns caused me without murmuring. but now, when i know that i will soon see him again--now, each hour is magnified into an eternity of torment, and all reasoning is in vain, and all patience exhausted. i feel as though i could die for very longing to see him. and yet, i am determined not to die; i must live--live to pluck the roses after having suffered so much from the thorns. but, alas! trude, if my sufferings shall have been too great--if i should die of these many wounds! sometimes it seems to me as though my strength were entirely exhausted, and-there, the thorn is again piercing my heart! how it pains!" she sank back groaning, and pressed her quivering hand to her breast. trude hurried forward, rubbed her cold, damp brow with strengthening essences, and then ran to the closet to get the little phial of medicine which the physician had prescribed for such attacks of weakness. "open your lips, marie, and swallow these drops; they will relieve you." she slowly opened her eyes, and her trembling hand grasped the spoon which trude had filled from the phial, and carried it to her pale lips. "that will do you good, my dear child," said the old nurse, in a firm voice, that knew nothing of the tears which stood in her eyes. "the doctor said these little attacks were harmless, and would cease altogether by and by." "yes, they will cease altogether by and by," whispered marie, after a pause. "cease with my life! i will not die! no, i will not!" with a quick movement, she arose and walked rapidly to and fro in the little room. a few roses and violets were swept from the table by marie's dress, and fell to the floor. in passing, marie's foot crushed them. she stood still and looked down sadly at these flowers. "see, trude," said she, with a faint smile, "a few moments ago i was complaining of having suffered so much from thorns, and now it looks as if fate intended to avenge me. it strews my path with flowers, as for a bride on her way to the altar, or for a corpse that is being borne to the grave." "but, my child, what strange words these are!" cried trude, with assumed indignation. "the physician says that all danger is past, and that you are steadily improving; and you say such sad and ominous things that you make me feel sad myself, and make the tears gather in my eyes. that is not right, marie, for you well know that the doctor said you must carefully avoid all agitation of mind, and endeavor to be uniformly cheerful." "it is true, good nurse, i ought to be cheerful, and i will be cheerful. you see it is only because i so long to live--so long to pluck a few roses after having been wounded by so many thorns. you must not scold me on this account," continued marie, as she entwined her arms lovingly around her old nurse. "no, you must not scold me!" "i am not scolding you, you dear, foolish child," said trude, laughing. "i, too, so long to see you live; and if i could purchase life for you with my heart's blood--well, you know i would gladly shed my blood for you, drop by drop." "yes, i know you would," cried marie, tenderly, as she rested her head on trude's shoulder. "fortunately, however, it is not necessary," continued the old nurse. "marie will live and be happy without old trude's assistance. professor philip moritz will make us healthy and happy." "you, too?" asked marie, a happy smile lighting up her countenance.--"really, trude, i believe you love him too, and i suppose i ought to be jealous of you for daring to love my philip." "yes, i not only love him, but am completely bewitched by him," rejoined trude, laughing. "i long for him, day and night, because i desire to see my child happy. like a good, sensible girl, you must endeavor to recover your health and strength, in order that your philip may rejoice when he arrives, and not suppose you to be still unwell." "you are right, trude, philip will be alarmed if i am not looking well and strong. but then i really am well; all that i want is a little more strength. but that will soon come, as i intend to guard against all agitation and sad thoughts. these thoughts, however, return, again and again, particularly at night, when i am lying awake and feel feverish; they sit around my bed like ghosts, and not only tell me sad legends of the past but also make gloomy prophecies for the future. at night i seem to hear a cricket chirping in my heart in shrill, wailing tones: 'marie, you must die, you have made many roses for others, but life has no roses for you, and'--but this is nonsense, and we will speak of it no longer." "we will laugh at it," said trude, "that will be still better." she stooped down to pick up the flowers marie had trodden under foot, and availed herself of this opportunity to wipe the tears from her eyes. "the poor things! look, marie, you have completely crushed the poor little violets!" "there is a beautiful and touching poem about a crushed violet," said marie, regarding the flowers thoughtfully. "philip loved it, because his adored friend, goethe, had written it. one day when i showed him the first violets i had made, he smiled, pressed the little flowers to his lips and repeated the last lines of this poem. it seems to me that i still hear the dear voice that always sounded like sweet music in my ear. 'and if i die, 'tis she who takes my life; through her i die, beneath her feet!'" "there you have commenced again," sighed trude. "no more sad words, marie, it is not right!" "you are right, nurse," cried marie, throwing the flowers on the table. "what care we for crushed violets! we will have nothing to do with them! we will be gay! see, i am ascending my throne again," she continued, with mock gravity, as she seated herself in the arm-chair. "now i am the princess in the fairy-tale, and you are the old housekeeper whose duty it is to see that her mistress is never troubled with ennui. begin, madame; relate some story, or the princess will become angry and threaten you with her bunch of lilies." "i am not at all afraid," said trude, "i have a large supply of pretty stories on hand. i learned a great deal while attending to your commissions yesterday, marie." "my commissions? ah yes, i recollect, i asked you to look at the little monument on my father's grave. it has already been placed there, has it not?" "yes, marie, and the large cross of white marble is beautiful; the words you had engraved on it in golden letters are so simple and touching that the tears rushed to my eyes when i read: 'he has gone to eternal rest; peace be with him and with us all! his daughter, marie, prays for him on earth; may he pray for her in heaven!' the golden words shone beautifully in the sun." "they came from my heart, trude. i am glad that i can think of my father without sorrow or reproach. we were reconciled; he often came to see me, and looked on at my work for hours together, rejoicing when i had finished a flower." "it is true," said trude, "your father was entirely changed. i believe his conscience was awakened, and that he became aware of how greatly he had sinned against a good and lovely daughter." "do not speak so, trude. all else is forgotten, and i will only remember that he loved me when he died. the blessing uttered by his dying lips has wiped out his harsh words from my remembrance. let it be so with you, too, trude! promise me that you will think of my father with kindness only." "i promise," said the old woman, hesitatingly, "although--well, let the dead rest, we will speak of the living. marie, whom do you suppose i met on my return from the churchyard? mrs. general von leuthen!" "my mother," exclaimed marie, raising her hand convulsively to her heart, "my mother!" "yes, your unnatural mother," cried trude, passionately; "the woman who is the cause of all your misfortunes and sorrows--the woman i hate, and will never forgive--no, not even in my hour of death." "i have already forgiven her, although my hour of death is, as i hope, far distant. where did you see her?" "riding in a beautiful carriage, and very grand and stately she looked, too. happening to see me, she called out to the servant, who sat by the coachman's side, to halt. the carriage stopped, and her ladyship had the wondrous condescension to beckon to me to approach." "and you did so, i hope?" said marie, eagerly. "yes, i did, but only because i thought you would be angry with me if i did not. i stepped up to the carriage, and her ladyship greeted me with the haughtiness of a queen, and inquired after the health of my dear mistress. she wished to know if you were still happy and contented, and whether you never regretted what you had done. to all of which i joyously replied, that you were happy and contented, and were about to be married to the dear professor who was expected to arrive to-day. her ladyship looked annoyed at first, but soon recovered her equanimity, and said she was glad to hear it. she then observed that something of a very agreeable nature had also occurred to her a short time ago, and that her exalted name and high connections had at last been a great service to her. she had become lady stewardess of the countess von ingenheim's household, and at her particular request his majesty the king had permitted her to resume her family name, and call herself countess dannenberg. she had a large salary, a waiting-maid, and a man-servant. moreover, the king had given her a pair of beautiful horses and a magnificent carriage, with her coat of arms painted on the door. the king was very gracious to her, as was also countess ingenheim. i tell you, marie, her ladyship was almost delirious with joy, and exceedingly proud of her position. you know who this countess ingenheim is, do you not?" marie shook her head slowly. "i believe i did know, but i have forgotten." "this countess ingenheim is the wife of the left hand of our king; her maiden name was julie von voss, and she was maid of honor to the queen-dowager. the king made her a countess, and his bad councillors and favorites told him he could marry her rightfully, although he already had a wedded wife. these exalted interpreters of god's word told the king that it was written in the bible: 'let not your right hand know what the left does,' and that this meant: 'it does not concern the wife of your right hand, although you should take another on your left.' the king was easily persuaded of this, and the pious privy-councillor wöllner, who is an ordained priest, performed the ceremony himself, and is on this account in high favor at court. the newly-created countess von dannenberg has become lady stewardess to the newly-created countess ingenheim; she is proud of it, too, and does not consider it beneath her dignity to be in the service of the wife of the right hand. to have a celebrated professor as son-in-law was not enough for her--that she called a disgrace. but she bends the knee to gilded disgrace, and acts as if she were not well aware that the wife of the left hand is no better than the mistress, and that the ancient nobility of the countess von dannenberg is sullied when it comes in such close contact with the brand-new nobility of the countess ingenheim." "say no more, trude, do not give way to passion," said marie, wearily. "i am glad that she has at last found the happiness and content she has so long been seeking. on earth each one must seek out his happiness in his own way, and we can reproach no one because his is not ours." "but we can reproach every one who seeks it in a dishonorable way, and that her ladyship has done, and--" "be still, trude!" interrupted marie; "you forget that she is my mother." "why should i remember it?" cried trude, passionately; "why should not i also, at last, forget what she has forgotten throughout her entire life? i hate her!" "and i," said marie, softly, as she folded her hands piously and looked upward, "i forgive her with my whole heart, and wish her all the happiness she can desire." "ah, marie," cried the old woman, as she hurried forward, seized marie's hands and covered them with kisses, "how good an angel my marie is, and how wicked, how abominable an old woman i am! forgive me, my child, i, too, will endeavor to be better, and to learn to be good and pious from you." "as if you were not so already, my dear nurse!" cried marie, as she entwined her arms lovingly around the old woman, who had seated herself on a stool at her feet and was looking up at her tenderly. "as if you were not the best, the most loving, the kindest and the bravest of women! what would have become of me without you? how could i have survived these two long, terrible years, if you had not stood at my side like a mother? who has worked with me and kept my little household in good order? who nursed me when i was sick? who cheered me in my hours of sadness, and laughed with me in my hours of gladness? you, my dear, kind nurse, you did all this: your noble, honest, brave heart has supported, guarded, and protected me. i thank you for all this; i thank you for your love, and if i should die, my last breath of life and my last thought will be a blessing for my dear, good nurse!" they held each other in a long and close embrace, and for a time nothing was heard but sighs and suppressed sobbing. then old trude released her darling, with a last tender kiss. "here we are in the midst of emotions and tears," said she, "although we had determined to be cheerful and gay, in order that we might give our dear philip a joyous reception if he should happen to come to-day, and not have to meet him with tear-stained countenances." "do you, then, really consider it possible that he may come to-day?" asked marie, eagerly. "professor gedicke said we might expect him at any hour," replied trude, smiling. "let us, therefore, be gay and merry; the days of pain and sorrow are gone, and hereafter your life will be full of happiness and joy." "do you really believe so, trude?" asked marie, fastening her large luminous eyes in an intent and searching gaze on the pale, wrinkled countenance of her old nurse. she had the courage to smile, and not to falter under the anxious gaze of her darling. "certainly i do," said she; "and why should i not? is not your lover coming back after a separation of two years? are we not to have a wedding, and will we not live together happily afterward? we are not poor; we have amassed a little fortune by the labor of our hands. to be sure, we cannot keep an equipage for our marie, but still she will have enough to enable her to hire a carriage whenever she wishes to ride, and it seems to me it is all the same whether we drive with four horses or with one, provided we only get through the dust and mud. but listen, marie, i have not yet given you all the news, i have something to tell that will be very agreeable." "then tell me quickly, trude, i love to hear good news." "my child, you have often asked me if i had heard any thing of mr. ebenstreit, and if i knew what had become of him. in your goodness you have even gone so far as to observe that you have been hard and cruel toward him." "and i have been, trude, i presumed to play the rôle of fate and take upon myself the punishment which is god's prerogative only. true, i had bitter cause of complaint against him, and he was to blame for my unhappiness, but i am not free from blame either, and he, too, had just cause of complaint against me. i had stood before god's altar with him--had, at least, recognized him as my husband before the world, and yet i have hated and detested him, and have fulfilled none of the duties which devolved upon me from the moment of our marriage." "but you were never married, marie. you did not utter a single word at the wedding? you did not pronounce the 'yes.'" "do not speak so, trude; we deceive our conscience with such pretences, and only persuade ourselves that we have done no wrong. but when we lie sleepless on our couches during the long night, as i do, then the slumbering conscience awakens, all self-deception vanishes, and we see things as they really are. yes, i know that i have not behaved toward ebenstreit as i ought to have done, and i wish i knew where he is, so that i could write to him and make peace with him before--" "before you marry, you would say, marie? then, listen! i know where mr. ebenstreit is. i also know that he is doing well, and that he, too, longs to see and speak with you. what do you say to this news, my child?" "i am glad to hear it, trude, and wish to see ebenstreit as soon as possible, for all things are uncertain on earth, and if he came later--" "yes, if he came later," said trude, interrupting her, "our dear professor might be here, and then we would not have time to occupy ourselves with any one else. you see i thought of this when i saw mr. ebenstreit, and therefore--" "what? you have seen and spoken with him?" "of course i have, my child. from whom could i have otherwise learned all this? he entreated me to procure him an interview with you. i told him to come here in two hours and wait outside, promising to call him in if you should permit me to do so. the two hours have now passed, my child. will you see him?" "wait a moment," said marie, turning pale. "i must first collect my thoughts, i must first nerve myself. you know i am very weak, trude, and--there! i feel that thorn piercing my breast again! it pains fearfully!" she closed her eyes, threw herself back in the chair, and lay there quivering and groaning. trude remained standing near the door tearfully, regarding the pale, attenuated countenance, which was still her ideal of all that was lovely and beautiful. slowly marie opened her eyes again. "you may bring him in, trude, but we will be composed and avoid speaking of the past." marie followed trude with a sorrowful gaze, as she walked noiselessly to the door and out into the hall. "the good, faithful old nurse!" murmured she. "does she really believe that i shall recover, or is she only trying to make me believe so? i so long to live, i so long for a little happiness on earth!" chapter ii. reconciliation. the door opened again, and trude entered, followed by a tall, thin gentleman. his cheeks were hollow, and his light hair and brown beard had turned gray, and yet it seemed to marie that he was younger and stronger than when she had last seen him, two years before, on that fearful day of vengeance. his countenance now wore a different, a firmer and more energetic expression, and the eyes that had formerly been so dim, now shone with unusual lustre, and were fastened on marie with an expression of tender sympathy. he hurried forward, grasped the two pale, attenuated hands which marie had extended toward him, hid his countenance in them and wept aloud. for a time all was silent. trude had noiselessly withdrawn to the furthest corner of the room, where she stood, half-concealed by the bed-curtains, endeavoring to suppress her sobs, that her darling might not hear them. "marie, my friend, my benefactress," said ebenstreit, after a long pause, "i have come to thank you. i came here from new orleans, with no other intention and no other wish than the one that is now being gratified: to kneel before you, holding your hands in mine, and to say: i thank you, my benefactress! you have made a new being of me; you have driven out the demons, and prepared the altar for good spirits. i thank you, marie, for through you i have recovered happiness, peace, and self-esteem! marie, when we last saw each other, i was a sordid being, whose soul was hardened with egotism and vanity. you were right in saying there was nothing but cold calculation, and the miserable pride of wealth, in the place where the warm human heart should beat. you stepped before me like the avenging angel with the flaming sword. in your sublime, your divine anger, you thrust the sword so deep into my breast, that it opened like the box of pandora, permitting the evil spirits and wicked thoughts to escape, and leaving, in the depths of the heart that had been purified by pain, nothing but hope and love. when i left you at that time and rushed out into the street, i was blinded and maddened. i determined to end an existence i conceived to be worthless and disgraced. but the hand of a friend held me back, the voice of a friend consoled me; and then, when i was again capable of thought, i found that these words were engraven in my heart and soul, in characters of living flame: 'marie shall learn to esteem me, i will make of myself a new man, and then marie will not despise me.' these words have gone before me on the rough path, and through the darkness of my life, like a pillar of flame. it was my sun and my star. i looked up to it as the mariner looks at his guiding compass when tossed about on the wide ocean. this pillar of flame has at last led me back to the avenging angel, whom i now entreat to become an angel of reconciliation. i entreat you, marie, forgive me for the evil i have done you, forgive me for the unhappiness i have caused you, and let me try to atone for the past!" marie had at first listened to him with astonishment, and then her features had gradually assumed an expression of deep emotion. her purple lips had been tightly compressed, and the tears which had gathered in her large eyes were slowly gliding down over the cheeks on which the ominous roses were once more burning brightly. now, when ebenstreit entreated her to forgive him, when she saw kneeling in the dust before her the man whose image had stood before her conscience for the past two years as an eternal reproach, and as a threatening accusation, a cry of pain escaped her heaving breast. she arose from her arm-chair, and stretched out her hands toward heaven. "too much, too much, o god!" she cried, in loud and trembling tones. "instead of passing judgment on the sinner, you show mercy! all pride and arrogance have vanished from my soul, and i bow myself humbly before thee and before this man, whom i have wronged and insulted!" and before ebenstreit--who had arisen when he saw marie rise from her chair in such great agitation--could prevent it, marie had fallen on her knees before him, and raised her folded hands, imploringly. "ebenstreit, forgive me, i entreat you! i have wronged and insulted you, have lived at your side in hatred and anger, instead of striving to be a blessing to you--instead of endeavoring to seek out with you the path of goodness and justice from which we had both wandered so far. but look at me, ebenstreit! behold what these years of remorse have made of me--behold her who was once the proud tyrant who presumed to command, but has now become a poor penitent who humbly begs forgiveness. speak, say that you forgive me! no, do not attempt to raise me up! let me remain on my knees until you take pity on me in your magnanimity--until you have uttered the words for which my soul thirsts." "well, then, marie," sobbed ebenstreit, his countenance flooded with tears, "i will do your will. marie, i forgive you with my whole soul--forgive you for all my sufferings and tears, and tell you that out of these sufferings consolations, and out of these tears hopes, have blossomed. god bless, protect, and reward you, my benefactress, my friend!" with folded hands, and in breathless suspense, she listened to his words, and a joyous smile gradually illumined her countenance. "i thank you, my friend; i thank you," she murmured, in low tones; and lightly and airily, as though borne up by her inward exaltation, she arose and stood before ebenstreit, a radiant smile on her lips. "do not weep, my friend," she said, "all sorrow and sadness are past, and lie behind us. let us rejoice in the good fortune that brings us together once more for a short time, after our long separation and estrangement. you shall narrate the history of your life during this period, and tell me where and how you have lived and struggled." "no," he said, tenderly, "let me first hear your history." "my friend," she replied, smiling, as she slowly seated herself in the arm-chair, "look at this table, look at these poor flowers made out of cloth, wire, and water-colors. these lilies and violets are without lustre and fragrance. such has been my life. life had no roses for me; but i made roses for others, and i lived because one heavenly flower blossomed in my life--i lived because this one flower still shed its fragrance in my heart. this is the hope of seeing my beloved once more! "do not ask me to tell you more; you will soon see and learn all; and i know you will rejoice in my happiness when my hope becomes beautiful, blissful reality!" "i will, indeed," said ebenstreit, tenderly, "for your happiness has been my constant prayer since our separation; and not until i see you united to the noble man from whom i so cruelly and heartlessly separated you--not until then will i have atoned for my crime, and i conceive of the possibility of a peaceful and happy future for myself." she extended her hand and smiled. but this smile was so touching, so full of sadness, that it moved ebenstreit more profoundly than lamentations or despairing wails could have done. "tell me of your life," said marie, in a soft voice. "seat yourself at my side, and tell me where you have been and how you have lived." he seated himself as she had directed. old trude came forward from the background, and listened eagerly to ebenstreit's words. "i cannot illustrate my history as you did yours when you pointed to these flowers," he said, smiling. "in order to do this i should have to show you forests felled by the axe, fields made fruitful, rivers dammed up, and huts and barns erected after hard toil. when i rushed from your presence, in mad desperation, i met the banker splittgerber on the sidewalk. he had been standing at the door, awaiting me. i endeavored to tear myself from his grasp, but he held me firmly. i cried out that i wanted peace, the peace of the grave, but he only held me the more firmly, drew me away with irresistible force, raised me like a child, and placed me in his carriage, which then drove rapidly to the densest part of the zoological garden. i was wild with rage, and endeavored to jump out of the carriage. but on the side on which i sat, the carriage door was not provided with a handle, and i found it impossible to open it. i endeavored to pass splittgerber and get out at the other door, and cried: 'let me out! no one shall compel me to live! i will die, i must die!' but the old man held me with an iron grasp, and pressed me down on my seat again. a loud and terrible voice resounded in my ear, like the trumpet of the day of judgment, and to this hour i have not been able to convince myself that it was no other than the voice of good old splittgerber. this terrible voice uttered these words: 'you have no right to die, for you have not yet lived. first go and learn to live, in order to deserve death!' i was, however, completely overcome by these fearful words, and sank back in a state of insensibility." "'you have no right to die, for you have not yet lived,'" repeated marie, in a low voice. "have i then lived, and is it for this reason that--" she shuddered and interrupted herself: "go on, my friend--what happened further?" "of what further occurred i have no knowledge. i have a vague remembrance that i was like a departed soul, and flew about from place to place through the universe, seeking a home and an asylum everywhere, and finding none. i sojourned in hell for a long time, and suffered all the tortures of the damned. i lay stretched on the rack like prometheus, a vulture feeding on my vitals, and cried out vainly for mercy. when my wandering soul again returned to earth and to its miserable tenement--when i awakened to consciousness, they told me that i had been ill and delirious for a long time. good old splittgerber had nursed me like a father, and, when i recovered, made me the most brilliant offers. among many other similar propositions, i was to become his partner, and establish a branch house in new york. i rejected all; i could hear nothing but the trumpet-tones of that voice, crying: 'you have no right to die, for you have not yet lived. go and learn to live, in order to deserve to die!' i wished to deserve to die; that was my only thought, and no one should help me in achieving this end. i wished to accomplish this alone, entirely unaided! after having converted the paltry remnants of my property into money, i suddenly took my departure without telling any one where i was going. i was wearied of the old world, and turned my steps toward the new. i longed to be doing and struggling. i bought a piece of land in america, large enough to make a little duchy in germany. i hired several laborers, immigrants in whose countenances sullen despair was depicted, and with them i began my work; and a vast, gigantic work it was. a morass and a dense forest were to be converted into fruitful fields. what the titans of mythology could perhaps not have accomplished, was achieved by poor mortals to whom despair gave courage, and defiance of misfortune superhuman strength. we worked hard, marie, but our labors were blessed; we had the satisfaction of knowing that they were not in vain, and of seeing them productive of good results. the forest and morass i then bought have now been converted into a splendid farm, on which contented laborers live in cleanly cottages, rejoicing in the rewards of diligence. in the midst of this settlement lies my own house, a simple log-house, but yet a sufficiently comfortable dwelling for a laborer like myself. over the door stands the following inscription: 'learn to work, that you may enjoy life,' and on the wall of my humble parlor hangs a board on which is written: 'money is temptation, work is salvation. true riches are, a good heart and the joyousness resulting from labor.'" "you are a good, a noble man," whispered marie, regarding him earnestly. "i thank you for having come, i rejoice in your return." "i have not returned to remain," said ebenstreit, pressing her hand to his lips. "i only returned to see you, marie, and to render an account to heaven, through the avenging angel, whose flaming sword drove me from my sins. you see, marie, there is something of my former accursed sordidness in me still; i dare to speak of accounts even to god and to you, as if the soul's burden of debt could ever be cancelled! no, while i live i will be your debtor.--and your debtor, too, trude," said he, turning, with a smile, to the old woman, who was regarding him wonderingly. "i'm sure i don't know how that can be," said she, thoughtfully; "you have received nothing from me but abuse; that however you certainly still owe me. if you propose to return this now, and call me a short-sighted fool, and an abominable person, as i have so often called you, you will be perfectly justifiable in doing so. i must say that you have the right, and i am glad that i am compelled to say so. you have become a good man, mr. ebenstreit, and the good lord himself will rejoice over you, for it is written in the bible: 'when the unjust man returns to god there is more joy over him in heaven than over a hundred just men.' therefore, my dear mr. ebenstreit, pay me back for all my abuse, and then give me your hand and say: 'trude, we now owe each other nothing more, and after all you may be a very good old woman, whose heart is in the right place, and--her mouth too!'" ebenstreit extended his hand, with a kindly smile. "let us shake hands; the abuse you shall, however, not have. i am your debtor in a higher and better sense; your brave and resolute countenance was often before me, and at times, when a task seemed almost impossible, i seemed to hear a voice at my side, saying: 'work, work on! ransom your soul with the sweat that pours from your brow, you soul-seller, for otherwise old trude will give you no peace, either on earth or in heaven! work, work on! earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, otherwise you can never enter the kingdom of heaven, you soul-seller!' you will remember that this was the only title you accorded me in former days?" "well, mr. ebenstreit, i had others for you, to be sure," said the old woman, blushing, "but that was the main title on account of the five hundred dollars that--" "be still!" interrupted marie, as she slowly arose, and leaned forward in a listening attitude. "did you hear nothing, trude?" "no, my darling. what could i have heard?" "a carriage stopped before the door, and my heart suddenly ceased to beat, as if expecting a great joy or a great sorrow. i seemed to hear steps in the passage. yes, i recognize this step--it is his; he--be still! do you hear nothing?" they all listened for a moment in breathless suspense. "yes, i seem to hear some one walking in the outer hall," murmured the old woman. "let me go and see whether--" "some one is knocking," cried marie. "trude, some one is--" "be composed, my darling, be composed," said trude, in soothing tones; "if you excite yourself so much, it will be injurious. some one knocks again, and--" "trude, be merciful!" cried marie. "go and open the door. do not let me wait; i believe i have but a little while longer to live, and i cannot wait! go!" trude had hurried to the door, and opened it. she started, waved her hand, closed the door again, and turned to marie, who stood erect, in breathless suspense. "marie," said she, vainly endeavoring to speak with composure, "there certainly is some one at the door, who desires to speak with me, but it is no stranger; perhaps he wishes to order some flowers. i will go and ask him." she was about to open the door again, but marie ran forward and held her back. "you are deceiving me, trude. you well know who it is, and i know too. my heart tells me it is he! philip! my philip! come to me, philip!" "marie!" cried a loud, manly voice from the outside. the door was hastily thrown open; and he rushed in, with extended arms. "marie! where are you, marie!" she uttered a loud, piercing cry of joy, and flew to her lover's heart. "my philip! my beloved! god bless you for having come!" "my marie, my darling!" murmured he, passionately. "god bless you for having called me!" chapter iii. grim death. they held each other firmly embraced, heart to heart. all sorrow and sadness were forgotten; they were oblivious of the whole world, and of all that was going on around them. they did not see old trude standing near by, with folded hands, her face radiant with delight; they did not see her follow mr. ebenstreit, who had glided noiselessly out of the room. they did not hear the door creak on its hinges, as she closed it behind her, and left them alone and unobserved in the silent chamber. and, though the two had remained, though hundreds and hundreds of eyes had been fastened on them inquiringly, what would they have cared? they would, nevertheless, have still been alone with love, with happiness, and with the joy of reunion. her head still rested on his breast; he still pressed her to his heart. "marie, the dream of my whole life is now fulfilled; i hold you in my arms, you are mine! the restless wanderer has at last crossed the threshold of the promised land, and love and peace bid him welcome." "yes, my philip," she murmured, softly, "love and peace bid him welcome. pain has left us for evermore, and we shall be happy!" "yes, happy, marie! look up, darling, that i may read love in your dear eyes!" with his hand he attempted to raise her head, but she only pressed it the more firmly to his breast. "no, philip, let my head still rest on your bosom; let me dream on for a little while." "marie, i have yearned to see these dear eyes for two long years; look up, my darling!" "not yet, philip," she whispered, entwining her arms more closely around her lover, her countenance still hid in his bosom. "let me first tell you something, philip! i have been ill, very ill, and it was thought i would die. if you should find me a little changed, a little pale, my beloved, it will only be because i have not yet quite recovered, but am only steadily improving. remember this, and do not be alarmed. look at me! welcome, welcome, my philip!" when she raised her head, a radiant expression of happiness rested on her features; her lips were crimson, her eyes shone lustrously, and the death-roses on her cheeks burned brightly. death had, perhaps, been touched by the supreme happiness of these two beings, who had been wandering under a thunder-cloud of sorrow for long years, and who now fondly believed that they had at last found a refuge from the storms of life, and a balsam for all pain. death, who comes from god, had, perhaps, been moved with divine pity, and had lain concealed behind these flushed cheeks and crimson lips, permitting joy to illumine marie's countenance with a last golden ray of the setting sun, and to give her for a brief moment the appearance of health and strength. philip, at least, did not see the grim messenger; he was deceived by these death-roses, by this ray of sunshine. he had expected to find marie in a much worse condition. gedicke's letter had carried the conviction to his heart that he would find her in a hopeless, in a dying condition, and that nothing buoyed her up, and withheld her from the clutches of the grave, but her longing to see him once more. now she stood before him with rosy cheeks, with a bright smile on her lips, and with eyes that sparkled with joy. "marie, my jewel, my longed-for happiness, how lovely, how beautiful you are! why speak of illness and of pale cheeks! i see nothing of all this; i see you healthy, happy, and beautiful--as beautiful as when i often saw you in my dreams in the long nights of the past--as beautiful as i have ever conceived you to be when standing before the madonnas of raphael and giulio romano in rome and florence. 'gaze at me with your dark eyes,' i said to them. 'you would ask me whether i admire and adore you. true, you are lovely, but i know a marie who is lovelier and purer than you all! i know a marie whose eyes are radiant with the light of womanhood, purity, and virtue. she is not so coquettish as you are, maria della ledia; her eyes are not so dreamy as yours, maria di fuligno. but they are resplendent with holy love, and noble thoughts dwell on her chaste brow!' and now i have thee, and now will i hold thee, my marie, and nothing can separate us more!" "no," she said, thoughtfully, "nothing henceforth can now separate us but death!" "death has nothing to do with us, my darling. we shall live, and live a joyous, happy life!" "yes, live, live!" she cried, in such longing, passionate tones, and with so sad an expression of countenance, that moritz's heart quaked. it seemed to him as though a string had broken on the harp on which she had just begun to play the joyous song of life and of love, and at this moment he saw grim death peering forth from behind the roses on her cheeks, and the smile on her crimson lips. "come, my darling, let us be seated. there is your throne, and here at your feet lies he who adores you, looking up at his madonna, at his marie, with ecstacy." he bore her tenderly to the arm-chair, and then seated himself at her feet. he looked up at her with an expression of deep devotion, his folded hands resting on her lap. she bowed down over him and stroked with her pale little hand his black, curly hair, and the broad forehead she had once seen so gloomy and clouded, and which was now as clear and serene as the heaven in her own breast. "i have thee at last once more, thou star of my life! when i regard thee, i feel that life is, indeed, beautiful, and that one hour of bliss is not too dearly purchased with long years of suffering and want. we paid dearly, philip, but now we have the longed-for happiness. we have it and will hold it fast; nothing on earth shall tear it from us?" "no, nothing on earth, my beloved! like odysseus, i have now returned from my wanderings through life, and here i lie at the feet of my penelopeia; like him, i have driven off the suitors who aspired to the favor of my fair one. was it not a suitor, who slipped out at the door when i entered?" "a suitor of the past," replied marie, smiling. "did you not recognize him?" "have i ever known him? but what do we care, now that he has gone! i am not compelled to drive him off, nor yet to hang old trude as a go-between, as odysseus did the old woman of whom homer tells us." philip and marie both laughed. it was the innocent childlike laughter with which happiness illumines even the gravest countenances, and which permits those who have been sorely tried, and have suffered greatly, to find the innocence of youth and the smile of childhood again on the threshold of paradise regained. "marie, how beautiful you are when you laugh! then it seems as though all these years of sorrow had not been--as though we had only been dreaming, and now awake to find that we are again in the little room under the roof. you are once more my charming young scholar, and professor moritz has just come to give miss von leuthen a lesson in the italian language. yes, that is it, we are still the same; and see! there lie the flowers on your table, just as they were when old trude conducted me to your room to give you your first lesson." he took a handful of flowers from the table and held them between his folded hands. "you dear flowers! she is your god and your goddess! like god she made you of nothing, and, like the goddess flora, she strews you over the pathway of humanity; but to-day you shall receive the most glorious reward for your existence--to-day you shall adorn her, my fair flora!" he sprang up, seized whole handfuls of violets, pinks, lilies, and forget-me-nots, and strewed them over marie's head, in her lap, and all over and about her. "let me strew your path with flowers for the future, my darling. may your tender little feet never more be wounded by the sharp stones! may you never again be compelled to journey over rough roads! flowers shall spring up beneath your footsteps, and i will be the gardener who cultivates them." "you are my heaven-flower yourself, my imperial lily," said she, extending her hands. he took them in his, pressed them to his lips, and then resumed his former seat at her feet. "how handsome you are, philip, and how strong you look, tanned by the sun of italy and steeled by the combat with life! misfortune has made a hero of you, my beloved. you are taller and prouder than you were." "and are you not a heroine, marie, a victorious heroine?" "a victorious heroine!" she said, sadly. "a heroine who is struggling with death! do not look at me with such consternation, philip--i am well. it is only that joy and surprise have made me feel a little weak. you do not find that i look ill, and therefore i am not ill; you say i will recover, and therefore i will recover. tell me once more that i am not ill, that i will recover!" "you will recover; you will bloom again in happiness and joy." "you say these words in a sad voice, as though you did not believe them yourself! but i will not die; no, i will not! i am too young; i have not lived long enough. life still owes me so much happiness. i will not die! i will live--live!" she uttered this in loud tones of anguish, as though life were an armed warrior to whom she appealed to defend her against death, who was approaching her with a murderous dagger in his bony hand. but life had no longer a weapon with which to defend her; it timidly recoiled before the king who is mightier than the king of life, and whose sceptre is a scythe with which he mows down humanity as the reaper harvests the grain of the fields. "philip, my philip," cried marie, her countenance quivering with pain, "remain with me, my beloved! it is growing so dark, and--there, how my breast pains me again! alas, you have scattered flowers at my feet, but the thorns have remained in my heart! and they pain so terribly! it is growing dark--dark!--trude!" the old woman, who had been waiting at the threshold with the humility of a faithful dog, threw the door open and rushed forward to her darling, who lay in the arm-chair, with closed eyes, pale and motionless, her head resting on moritz's arm. "trude, call the physician!" cried he, in dismay. "run for assistance! run! run! she must not die! she shall not leave me! o god, thou canst not desire to tear her from me! thou permittedst me to hear her voice when in rome, when widely separated from her, and i answered this call and flew here on the wings of the wind. it cannot be thy will that i am to be surrounded by eternal silence--that i am never more to hear this dear voice!--help me, trude! why do you not call the physician?" "it is useless, dear sir, useless," whispered trude, whose tears were still flowing in torrents. "all the physicians say that her case is hopeless; they told me that this would occur, and that all would then be at an end. but perhaps this is only a swoon; perhaps we can awaken her once more." was it the strengthening essence with which trude rubbed her forehead, the strong musk-drops which she poured between marie's parted lips, or was it the imploring voice in which moritz called her name, and conjured her not to leave him?--marie opened her eyes and cast a look of ineffable tenderness at the pale, horror-stricken countenance of her lover, who was again kneeling at her feet, his arms clasped convulsively around her person, as if in a last despairing effort to withhold her from the king of terrors, who had already stretched out his skeleton arm to grasp his victim. "i am dying, philip!" murmured marie, in low tones, and her voice resounded on his ear like the last expiring notes of an æolian harp. "it is useless to deceive you longer; the truth is evident, and we must both bear it as we best may." "marie, i cannot, cannot bear it!" he sobbed, burying his countenance in her lap. "god is merciful; he will take pity on me, on my agony, on my love! god will grant you recovery!" "the only recovery god vouchsafes me is at hand," whispered marie. "recovery is death! i have felt it approaching for many, many days--in the long, fearful nights i have lain awake struggling with this thought, unable to comprehend it, and doubting god's mercy and goodness. my defiant heart refused to submit humbly to god's will, and still continued to entreat a little more life, a little happiness, of him who is inexorable, and upon whose ear the wail of man strikes in as low tones as the last breath of the insect we tread under foot. i comprehended, finally, that all complaints were useless--that nothing remained but to submit, to humble myself, to thank god for each hour of life as for a gracious boon, and to consider each ray of sunshine shed on my existence as a proof of his goodness. i have conquered myself; my stubborn heart has been softened, and no longer rebels against the hand of the almighty, to whom men are as worms, and as the grain of sand to the mighty glacier that touches the clouds. you, too, must be gentle and submissive, my philip. learn to submit to the eternal laws of god!" "no, i cannot," said he, in heart-rending tones; "i cannot be submissive. my heart is rebellious; in my anguish i could tear it from my breast when i see you suffer!" "i am not suffering, philip," said she, her countenance radiant with a heavenly smile. "all pain has now left me, and i feel as though i floated in a rosy cloud, high above all earthly sorrow. from this height i see how paltry all earthly sorrows are, and how little they deserve a single tear. here below, all is paltry and insignificant--above, all is great and sublime. oh, philip, how sweet it will be to meet you once more up there! in blissful embrace, our spirits will soar from star to star, and the glories of all worlds and the mysteries of all creations will be made manifest to us, and our life will be bliss and joy unending! the cloud is soaring higher and higher! philip, i see thee no longer!" "but i see thee, my darling," cried philip, despairingly, as he clasped her sinking head between his hands, and covered it with tears and kisses. "do not leave me, marie; stay with me, thou sole delight of my life! do not leave me alone in the world." his imploring voice had that divine power which, as we are told by the greeks, breathed life into stone, and transformed a cold, marble statue into a warm, loving woman. his imploring voice recalled the spirit of the loving woman to the body already clasped in the chilly embrace of death. "you shall not be solitary, philip," she murmured; "it is so sad to have to struggle alone through life. i must go, philip, but you shall not be left alone." "but i will be if you leave me, marie; therefore stay! oh, stay!" "i cannot, philip," gasped marie, in low tones. "you must place another at your side! another must fill my place. hear my last wish, my last prayer, philip. take a wife, marry!" "impossible, marie, you cannot be so cruel as to desire this." "i have thought of this a great deal, have struggled with my own heart, and am now convinced that you must do so. you must have a wife at your side who loves you. swear that you will seek such a wife. swear this, and accord me a last joy on earth." she raised her hand once more, and her dying gaze was fastened on him imploringly. he could not resist it; he clasped the pale fingers in his quivering, burning hands, and swore that he would do as she bade him. a faint smile flitted over her countenance, and her eyes sought out the faithful old woman, who had loved her like a mother, and who found it no longer necessary to conceal her tears, as she had been doing for many months, in holy and heroic deception. "trude," whispered marie, "you have heard his vow, and you must remind him of it, and see that he keeps it, and marries within the year. kiss me, trude, and swear that you will do so!" old trude had no other words than her tears, no other vow than the kiss which her trembling lips pressed on her darling's brow, already covered with that cold, ominous perspiration which gathers, like the morning dew of another world, on the countenances of those who stand on the threshold of the grave, and is symbolical of the new life to which they will awaken on high. "philip, my beloved, you too must kiss me!" whispered marie, in eager tones. "kiss me! hold me fast! drive death, grim, fearful death, away!" he kissed her, entwined his arms around her, and pressed her to his bosom. trude stretched out her arms imploringly into empty space, as if to ward off "grim death!" but he is king of kings, and claims as his own all who live on earth! silence reigned in the little chamber. holy is the hour of separation--holy the moment in which the immortal soul is torn from its earthly abode, and this holy moment must not be desecrated with lamentations and tears! after a long interval, the heart-rending cry of a man, and the low wail of a woman broke in upon the stillness.--marie had died, but a smile still rested on her lips. chapter iv. goethe's return from rome. goethe has returned! goethe is once more in our midst! he arrived quite unexpectedly yesterday evening, repaired at once to his summer-house in the park, raised the little draw-bridge, and has yet seen no one! this was the intelligence that ran like wildfire through the good city of weimar on the morning of the nineteenth of june, 1788, exciting joy and expectation in the minds of many, and perhaps also some little discontent in the minds of others. all were anxious to see the poet once more, who had been enthroned in weimar as the genius of gayety and happiness, and who had taken these two most beautiful ideals of humanity with him on leaving the capital of thuringia. weimar had changed greatly since goethe's departure. it had, as the duke charles august often complained to his friends, become dull, and "terribly old fogyish." the genial freedom from care and restraint, and the poetic enthusiasm and exaltation had all vanished with goethe. weimar lay slumbering in its dullness and tranquillity on the banks of the murmuring ilm, and the staid and honest burghers of the good city considered it a positive blessing that this restless spirit had departed. the court was also very quiet--so quiet that the genial duchess amelia could no longer endure it, and was preparing to journey to italy in the company of her friends, wieland and herder, to indemnify herself under the bright skies of italy, and in the midst of rare works of art, for the dull life she had led for the past few years. no wonder that the intelligence of goethe's return agitated the little city, and infused a little life and excitement into slumbering society! goethe's servant had appeared at the ducal palace at an early hour on the following morning, had communicated the glad tidings of his master's arrival to the duke's chamberlain, and had begged to be informed at what hour the privy-councillor would be permitted to pay his respects. the duke had briefly replied that he would send the privy-councillor word; nothing more! but half an hour later, instead of sending word, the duke quietly left his palace, crossed the market square with hasty footsteps, and passed on through the streets, into the park, and along its shady avenues to goethe's little summer-house. the bridge was raised, but the ilm was almost completely dried up by the summer heat, and but a narrow, shallow rivulet flowed in the midst of its sandy bed. what cared he, the genial duke, although his boots and prussian uniform should become somewhat soiled in wading across to the little island? he had not come to pay a visit of state, but only to call on his dear friend in an unceremonious manner, and to give him a warm embrace, after a long separation. therefore, forward, through mud and water! on the other side lies the modest little house of his cherished friend! forward! goethe's servant had not yet returned from the city; no one was there to announce the duke, and, if there had been, charles august would have preferred coming unannounced into his friend's presence; he desired to surprise him. noiselessly he crept up the stairway, and threw the door open. "welcome, my wolf! a thousand welcomes! to my arms, beloved brother!" "his highness the duke! how unexpected an honor!" goethe rose hastily from the sofa, and bowed profoundly to the duke, who still stood before him with extended arms. "and in this manner you receive your friend, wolf? truly, i came running here like a lover to a rendezvous with his adored, and now you receive me with a cold greeting?" "i beg leave to assure your highness, that the heart of your humble servant is also filled with joy, in beholding his dear master once more, and that this moment reconciles me to my return, and--" "wolf, tell me are you playing a comedy? are you only jesting, or has your sojourn in rome really made you the stiff and courtly old fellow you appear to be?" "i a stiff old fellow? i a courtly old fellow?" asked goethe, with sparkling eyes; and now he was again the goethe with the apollo countenance, as he had been in rome and castel gandolfo--once more the poet of italy, and no longer the privy-councillor of weimar. as the friends now looked at each other--as the duke's merry brown eyes encountered goethe's fiery, passionate gaze--the last vestiges of the privy-councillor fell from the poet. his handsome countenance brightened, and with a cry of joy he sprang forward, threw himself into the duke's arms and kissed his eyes and lips. "may god forgive me if i am guilty of disrespect! i had determined to return home as a well-trained and respectable privy-councillor and courtier. but i am not to blame if the sight of your dear countenance scatters all my good resolutions to the winds. let me embrace, let me kiss you once more, my dear duke and friend!" and he did so, again and again, with great ardor. the duke's laughter while submitting to this embrace seemed to be only assumed in order to conceal his emotion, and to make his friend believe that the tears which stood in his eyes had not come from the depths of his heart, but were only the consequence of his violent laughter. "i see you are still the same wild, unaccountable genius, wolf! you are as capricious as a beautiful woman, and as imperious as a tyrant! you are still the same goethe!" "not at all times, my duke. i have determined that the sober-minded world here in weimar, shall behold in me a sober-minded privy-councillor, and that i will give no further cause of offence to madame the duchess louise, and all other sensitive souls, by my wild behavior. but, for a quarter of an hour, and in the presence of my dear master, i let the mask fall, and am once more the old goethe or the young goethe. your goethe, my duke and friend!" "thanks, wolf, thanks! i hardly knew what to make of you, and was quite ill at ease when i saw you standing before me with your formal manner and courtier countenance. i thought to myself, 'this is not the goethe you expected to see; this is only his outward form; the inner man has remained in italy.'" "alas! that such should be the case, my duke, but it is so," sighed goethe. "the inner man has not yet quite returned; only after a painful struggle will it be able to tear itself from the beautiful home of art and poetry. but since i see you, my dear friend--since i behold your brave, handsome countenance, i feel that my wounds are healing--that i am coming home! they are healing under your loving glances, and i begin to rejoice in my return, and to consider what i did only from a sense of duty as a real pleasure." "then you did not return gladly, wolf? it was reason, and not your heart, that prompted you to return!" "it was reason only, my duke--the conviction that it was necessary for my well-being. do not be angry with me for saying so, but in this hour my heart must be laid bare to my friend, and he must see and read its every quivering fibre. no, my duke, my heart did not prompt me to return. i returned only because i recognized the necessity of so doing, if i hoped to accomplish any thing great and beautiful. i was compelled to flee from italy, the siren in whose toils i lay bound, and by whom my being was about to be divided, making of the poet that i really am, or at least can become, a talent-monster, who acquires a certain artistic ability in many things, without attaining to perfection in any one of them. had i remained in italy, i would perhaps at last have been able to paint a tolerably good aquarelle picture, and to make a passably good statue according to all the rules of art, and might also have manufactured dramas and poems in my hours of leisure; but i would have knocked in vain at the temple-gates of each individual art. not one of them would have been thrown open to permit me to enter, as the elect, the chosen! at the door of each temple i would have been turned away, and advised to apply for my reward at the abode of another art, and thus i would be considered a worthy applicant nowhere! he who desires to accomplish something great and complete, must bend all the energies of his soul to the accomplishment of one end. he must not diffuse his talents, but must concentrate them in the attainment of one object. he must strive upward; in the spirit he must see before him a summit to which he is determined to climb, removing all obstacles that may retard his progress. this conviction forces itself upon me, and i also became convinced that i possessed only one talent--that is, but one great talent--that could carry me to the summit, and this talent is my talent of poetry. all others are but secondary; and when i take this view of myself, i am reminded of the magnificent marble group in rome, 'the nile, with its tributaries.' there lies the godlike form in its manliness, strength, grandeur, and sublimity. on his sinewy arms, mighty shoulders, and muscular legs, a number of beautiful little boys are gracefully dancing, reclining, and playing with his limbs. these are the tributaries of the god nile, who lies there in sublime composure. he would still be a god although he were entirely alone. we would still admire him and rejoice in his beauty, although he were not surrounded by these graceful, boyish forms. but they would be nothing without him, would not be able to stand alone, and would be passed by as unworthy of attention, if they were not reposing on the grand central form. thus it is with all my other talents and capacities: they are only the little boys of the statue, and with me the poet is the main figure. yes, your highness, thus it is with me. my poetic talent is my nile, and my other little talents are the tributaries that flow into my being to strengthen me, to make the waves of poetry surge higher, and fill the air with music that shall resound throughout the world, and find an echo in heaven and in hell!" "oh, wolf!" cried the duke, now that goethe had paused for a moment, "how happy i am to have you once more in our midst! it is as though the sun had returned, and i had just stepped out of a dark cellar into the fresh, free air, and were walking hand in hand with a friend toward a glittering temple that had been closed to me during his absence. wolf, i was becoming a very prosaic and stupid fellow, and had almost begun to consider the dark cellar in which i was sojourning an agreeable dwelling. i thank god that you have come to relieve me from this curse! speak on, my friend; your words are as sweet music that i have not heard for a long time." "i must speak on, my duke; i must unburden my heart completely, for who knows whether it will often open itself again, and lay aside the covering in which i enveloped the poor thing when i took leave of bright, sunny italy? but i must admit that, since i crossed the borders of germany, i have been twenty times on the point of retracing my footsteps, in defiance of reason and conviction--on the point of giving up every thing, and deciding rather to live in italy as a happy, worthless dilettante, than to dwell in germany as a high official and celebrated poet. i am angry with myself, but i must nevertheless make the admission. i feel that i have been disenchanted since my return to germany: i now view, with sobered sight, many things that memory painted in glowing colors, and the result is that i am by no means pleased. i long to return to italy; and yet, in my inmost soul, i feel that i must remain here, in order to become that for which fate has destined me. i feel like crying, as a bad boy over his broken playthings, and i could box my own ears for entertaining such a desire. i now conjure you, my duke and friend, stand at my side and help me to allay the fury of the storm that is raging in my inmost being. see, what an infamous irony this is on my being! i have happily passed the stormy period of my poetic labors, and have freed myself from the bombast of sentimentality. i despise all this from the bottom of my heart, and am at times so angry with myself about that sentimental fellow, 'werther,' that i would gladly disown him. now a new storm is raging within me in its former fury, and my heart longs for italy as for a lost paradise. so help me, duke; help me to become a sensible man once more!" goethe stamped furiously on the floor as he uttered these words, and his eyes sparkled with anger. "now you look like the thunderer, like jupiter," said the duke, regarding him lovingly. "you have returned handsomer and sublimer than when you departed, and i can readily comprehend that all the goddesses and nymphs of italy have endeavored to retain in their happy land the heavenly being in whom the sublimity of jove and the beauty of apollo are united." "duke!" cried goethe, furiously, "i conjure you, speak seriously! do not annihilate me with your ridicule!" "well, then, we will be serious," said charles august, tenderly. "come here, wolf, and seat yourself at my side on this little sofa, where we have so often sat together in brotherly love. thus it shall be to-day again. i see, to my joy, wolf, that you are unchanged, and your quick temper and fierce anger against yourself are therefore refreshing to your old friend. now let us see what can be done; but this i tell you in advance--you must overcome your longing to return to italy, you must remain here, for only in tranquillity and peace can you attain the high ends of your existence, and climb to the summit of which you were speaking. of this you were convinced yourself, and on this account you left italy and returned home. therefore be true to yourself, you dear, great fellow, and journey on toward your high aim with undaunted heart and steadfast gaze! accomplish your sublime mission as poet, and i will endeavor to procure you the leisure and honorable retirement essential to your poetic labors." "my duke and master, you are indeed my savior!" cried goethe; "you have spoken what i scarcely dared utter! yes, that is it! leisure and retirement i must have. my official sprang wholly from my personal relations to your highness. let our old ones be modified--let a new relation hereafter exist between us. let me fill the whole measure of my existence at your side, so that my strength may be concentrated and made available, like a newly-opened, collected, and purified spring situated on an eminence, from which your will can readily cause its waters to flow in any direction! continue to care for me as you have heretofore done; thus you will do more for me than i could accomplish for myself, more than i can desire or demand. yes, i hope that i will become more to you than i have hitherto been, if you will only command me to do that which no one can do but myself, and commission others to do the rest. i can only say: 'master, here am i, do with me as you will.'"[44] "let me first tell you, wolf, what it is that no one but yourself can do: gladden my heart, elevate my mind, and restore sunshine to our little city. during your absence i have made a fearful discovery concerning myself; i am fast becoming an 'old fogy,' and if new life and activity are not infused into my sluggish spirit, i greatly fear that my case will soon be hopeless. as it is, i resemble the stagnant waters of a ditch. in its depths swims many a fine fish and blossoms many a fair flower, but the concealing duck-weed covers its surface and hides the treasures that lie below. you and you alone can brighten the mirror of my soul. and if you but now called yourself my servant, i can reverse your poetic phrase, and say to you: 'servant, here am i--do with your master as you will.'" "see, my duke, you make me blush for shame. you alone are master, and you only can do as you will." "then let me tell you what my will is, wolf, and i will be brief, for i observe that the quarter of an hour to which you proposed to limit your outpouring of the heart is almost at an end, and the worthy face of my cabinet president and privy-councillor is already peering forth from behind the godlike countenance of the poet. i wish you to retain the rank and dignities with which you were invested when you left for italy. you are herewith relieved of the duty of presiding in my cabinet and in the war office. you, however, still retain the right to attend the various meetings, if you should find time to do so, and whenever you appear you will seat yourself in the chair set apart for me. i will see that instructions to this effect are issued. on the other hand, you will retain the superintendence of the mining commission, and all other institutions of science and art which you now hold. your chief occupation will, however, be to stand at my side as friend and councillor, and to tell me the plain, unvarnished truth at all times. these are your duties, and you will now perceive that i have known how to read your soul, although we were widely separated, and that i have endeavored to make your future honorable, and not too burdensome. and, that you may not suppose, wolf, that these are only fine phrases and that these thoughts first occurred to me in your presence to-day, i have brought you the written order addressed to the bureau of my cabinet, and the letter in which i acquainted you with all these matters, and which i was about to forward to you in rome when the letter came announcing your departure from that city." "as if my dear, my noble duke ever needed witnesses to confirm his statements," cried goethe, as he gently refused to receive the papers which the duke held in his extended hand. "ah, i perceive the cabinet president is himself once more," cried the duke, laughing. "i must now retire to my ducal palace. others will, i have no doubt, think i have played the barbarian and tyrant by remaining with you so long, and thereby robbing them of the time to which they imagine they have a fairer title." "duke, i know of no one who has a higher and better title to my time and person than yourself, my dear patron and friend." "wolf, it is well that i alone have heard these words," cried charles august, gayly; "i believe there is a woman in whose ears they would have had a discordant sound. the responsibility must not rest on me, if a difficulty should arise on your first meeting. therefore i am going, wolf, although i am very curious to hear of your promised land and of your discoveries and purchases, but for this i will have to wait till the afternoon. you will, of course, dine with me to-day, wolf, and dispense a little of the incense of your eloquence on the altar of my household gods. farewell till we meet again, my returned wanderer! i must, however, request you not to come as the privy-councillor, but as the poet. you may show your official mask and the star on your breast to the court, but appear before me with your apollo countenance and the stars of your eyes." "my dear duke," said goethe, affectionately, "your presence has cheered and strengthened me; i feel as though i had been bathing in nectar, and had been refreshed with ambrosia. when i am with you, nothing will be wanting to my joy and happiness. you must, however, not be angry, my dear duke, if i should sometimes appear grave and stiller than usual in the presence of others, and you will then know that it is only the longing after the distant land of the gods that is tormenting me." "i will know how to account for it, wolf, and will respect your longing; i very much doubt, however, whether others will be equally considerate--i doubt whether one person of whom i am thinking will be particularly pleased with such conduct on your part. have you seen her already, wolf?" "whom does your highness mean?" asked goethe, with a perfectly innocent expression of countenance. the duke laughed. "oh, wolf, wolf, i hope you have not exchanged names, as hector and patroclus exchanged armor, and become von stein.[45] i hope you return to your old love, faithful and true. ah, there i have made a pun without intending it. excuse me, i entertained no evil design, but now that i have said it i will repeat it. you return to your old love, faithful and true. remain here, you must not accompany me; i came _sans cérémonie_, and i will take my departure in like manner. it is understood that we dine together to-day. adieu!" a cloud gathered on goethe's brow as the duke left the room. "my old love!" said he to himself, in low tones. "i wish he had not spoken that word; it sounds so ridiculous!" chapter v. estrangement. charlotte von stein sat before her mirror, anxiously regarding her countenance, and carefully examining each feature and every little wrinkle that was observable on her clear forehead and cheeks. "no," said she, with an air of joyous confidence, "no, it is not visible; no one can read it in my face! it is a secret between myself and my certificate of baptism!" as intelligent as she was, charlotte von stein was yet subject to that cowardly fear of her sex--the fear that her age might be read in her countenance. she, too, was wanting in that courage which contents itself with the eternal youth of the mind, and does not demand of its covering that it retain no traces of the rude, unfeeling hand of time. a woman who loves has invariably the weakness to desire not to become old, at least in the eyes of him whose image fills her heart--in the eyes of him she loves. she does not consider that, in so doing, she insults the intelligence of the object of her devotion, by admitting that he thinks more of the outward form than of the inner being, and loves with the eyes only, and not with the mind. in the first years of their acquaintance, and in the incipient stage of their attachment, charlotte von stein had always listened to goethe's protestations of love with a merry smile, and had invariably replied: "i am too old for you! remember that i am some years older than you--that i am old enough to be your mother." when she made this reply, goethe would laugh, and kiss with passionate tenderness the fair hand of the woman who offered him motherly friendship, and whom he adored with all the ardor of a lover. but ten long years had passed since then! charlotte thought of this while looking at herself in the mirror, and she sighed as she admitted to herself that she had committed a fault--a great fault, for she had left the cool regions of motherly tenderness, and had permitted herself to be carried away by the tide of goethe's passion; the two flames in her heart had been united into the one godlike flame of love. it had seemed so sweet to be adored by this handsome man, and to listen to his tender protestations and entreaties! it had been so charming to receive each morning a letter filled with passionate assurances of love, and vows of eternal fidelity! she had continued to read these ardent letters until their words glowed in her own heart--until, at last, that day came for the lovers of which dante says: "on that day they read no more"--the day on which charlotte confessed to her enraptured lover that his love was reciprocated. a few days later, goethe had written: "my /first and best friend/! i have always had an ideal wish as to how i desired to be loved, and have vainly sought its fulfilment in my illusive dreams. now that the world seems lighter to me each day, i see it realized in such a manner that it can never be lost again. farewell, thou fairest prospect of my whole life; farewell, thou only one, in whom i need lose nothing, in order to find all!"[46] charlotte had placed this little letter in a golden locket, from which she was never separated; it had been her blissful assurance, her talisman of eternal youth and joy. she now turned from the mirror that utterly refused to say any thing agreeable, and drew from her bosom her talisman, the locket that contained the relic, the source of so much happiness, love, and delight. relics! alas, how much that we consider real, present, and full of life, is only a relic of the past! how few men there are in whose hearts the love they once vowed should be eternal, is no more than a relic!--the crumbling bone of a saint, to whom altars were once erected, and who was adored as an immortal, unchangeable being. alas, love, thou poor saint, how often are thy altars overthrown, and how soon do thy youth and beauty fade, leaving nothing of thee but a little dust and ashes--a relic! charlotte von stein held the letter in her hands, but the thought did not occur to her that it too was only a relic; she still considered it the eloquent witness of passionate love. while reading the letter, a bright smile had illumined her features, and imparted to them a more youthful and beautiful expression. she now kissed the sheet of paper, and replaced it in the locket which she wore on a golden chain around her neck. what need had she of written evidences? was not _he_ near? would not _his_ lips soon say more, in a single kiss, than thousands of written words could tell? "but he might have come sooner," whispered a voice in charlotte's heart; "it is very late." her beautiful brown eyes cast an anxious look toward the door, and she smiled. her heart throbbed in advance of time; it was still so early in the morning, that it would hardly have been considered proper for him to call at an earlier hour. but now her heart beat quicker--she heard a step in the antechamber. "it is he! be firm, my heart, do not break with delight, for--yes, it is he! it is he!" she flew forward to meet him, with extended hands, her countenance radiant with delight. "welcome, goethe, a thousand welcomes!" "a thousand thanks, charlotte, that your faithful, loving heart bids me welcome!" his large black eyes regarded her with all their former tenderness, and then--then he kissed her hand. charlotte could scarcely restrain a sigh, and could not repress the terror that pervaded her whole being. he felt the tremor in the hands which he held in his own, and it was perhaps on this account that he released them, threw his arms around her and pressed her to his heart. "here i am once more, charlotte, and, as god is my witness, i return with the same love and fidelity with which i left you! you can believe this, my beloved, for it was on your account chiefly, or on your account solely, that i returned at all. you must therefore love me very dearly, charlotte, and reward me, with faithful love and cordial friendship, for the sacrifice i have made for your sake." "it was, then, a sacrifice?" said she, with a touch of irony in her voice that did not escape goethe. "yes, my dearest, this return to cold, prosaic germany, from the warm, sunny clime of happy italy, was a sacrifice." "then i really regret that you did not remain there," said she, with more sensitiveness than discretion. he looked at her wonderingly. "you regret that i have returned? i supposed you would be glad." "i can rejoice in nothing that i have attained by a sacrifice on your part." "my love, do not let us quarrel over words," said he, almost sadly. "we will not unnecessarily pour drops of bitterness into the cup of our rejoicing at being together once more. we have met again, and will endeavor to hold each other fast, that we may never be divided." "if an effort is necessary, then we are already half divided." "but i have come home in order that we may be reunited, wholly and joyfully," said goethe, moved to kindness and generosity by the tears which stood in her eyes, and the annoyance and sadness that clouded her countenance, rendering it neither younger nor more beautiful. but remembrances of the past smiled on him in the lustrous eyes of the woman he had loved so ardently for ten years, and it was still a very comforting feeling, after having been tossed about by the storms of life for so long a time, to return once more to his heart's home, to lie once more in the haven of happiness and love, where there were no more storms and dangers, and where the wearied wanderer could enjoy peaceful rest, and dream sweet dreams. he seated himself at charlotte's side on the sofa, laid his arm around her neck, took her hand in his own, looked lovingly into her countenance, and began to tell her of his journey--of the little accidents and occurrences that can only be verbally imparted. she listened attentively; she rejoiced in his passionate eloquence, in his glowing descriptions of his travels, and yet--and yet, as interesting as this was there was nevertheless another theme that would have been far more so--the theme of his love, of his longings to see her, and of his delight in being once more reunited with his charlotte, and in finding her so beautiful, so unchanged. but goethe did not speak of these things; and, instead of contenting herself with reading his love in his tender glances, his smiles, and his confiding and devoted manner, her heart thirsted to hear passionate assurances of love fall from his lips. her countenance wore a listless expression, and she did not seem to take her usual lively interest in his words. goethe observed this, and interrupted his narrative to tell her that he was delighted to be with her once more, and that she was still as beautiful and charming as ever. hereupon charlotte burst into tears, and then suddenly embraced him passionately, and rested her head on his breast. "oh! let no estrangement occur between us; do not become cold and reserved to me too, as you are to the rest of the world!" "am i that?" asked he, with an offended air. from her at least he had not deserved this reproach, and it affected him disagreeably, casting a damper over the gayety with which he had been narrating his adventures. "am i really cold and reserved?" he asked, as she did not reply, for the second time. "yes, wolf," said she, with vivacity, "you know that you are; the world accuses you of being so." "because i am not like a market-place, open to the inspection of every fool, and in which the inquisitive rabble can gaze at, handle, and criticise every thing, as though the holiest thoughts of the soul were mere wares exposed for sale!--because i am rather to be compared to a fortress surrounded by a high wall, which opens its well-guarded gates to the initiated and chosen only. in this sense i admit that that which is called the world, and which is in reality only the inquisitive, gossipping rabble, composed chiefly of individuals who make great pretensions to intellectuality, but are generally empty-headed--that this world calls me cold and reserved, i admit. but have i ever been so toward my friends, and, above all, toward you?" "no, heaven be thanked! no, my beloved wolf!" cried charlotte, in eager and tender tones, well aware that she had committed an error, which she wished to repair; "no, toward me you have always been friendly, communicative, and open, and therefore--" "and therefore, my love," said he, interrupting her, "therefore you should not have reproached me, undeservedly, in the hour of our reunion." he arose and took his hat from the table. "oh, wolf!" cried she, anxiously, "you are not going?" "i must, my dearest! i must first pay a few formal visits, to avoid giving offence. i must call on some friends i expect to meet at the ducal table to-day." "perhaps it was only on this account that you visited me?" said charlotte, the tears which she could no longer repress, gushing from her eyes. "wolf, did you visit me solely because you expected to meet me in the ducal palace to-day?" he regarded her with a look of distress and astonishment. "charlotte, dear charlotte, is it possible that so great a change has come over you in two short years?" she started, and a glowing color suffused itself over her countenance; the poor woman thought of what her mirror had told her but a short time before, and goethe's question awakened bitter reflections. "am i really so changed?" sighed she, and her head sank wearily upon her breast. "no," cried he, earnestly, "no, charlotte, you cannot have changed; it is only that this first moment of reunion after a long separation has affected us strangely. we will soon be restored to each other completely, we will soon be reunited in love and friendship. charlotte, it is impossible that two years of separation can have torn asunder the holy union of our souls! let us strive to prevent so unhappy a consummation; it would be a misfortune for me--yes, i may say, a misfortune for you, too! i think we love each other so tenderly that we should both endeavor, with the whole strength of our souls, to ward off misfortune from each other. let these be my farewell words, darling, and, as i have just learned that you too will dine at court to-day, i can joyfully say--till we meet again!" he embraced her, and pressed a kiss on her lips, a kiss that wounded her heart more than a cold leave-taking would have done; for this gentle, friendly kiss seemed to her but as the second echo of what her mirror had said! as the door closed behind his loved form, charlotte sank down on her knees, buried her face in the cushions of the sofa, and wept bitterly. his head erect, his countenance grave and earnest, goethe walked on to pay his calls; and those whom he thus honored found that be had come home colder and more reserved than when he had departed. but, at the banquet, in the ducal palace, he was neither cold nor reserved; there he was eloquent and impassioned,--there enthusiastic words of poetic description flowed like golden nectar from his smiling lips; there his eye sparkled and his cheek glowed, and his illustration of life in italy awakened delight and admiration in the hearts of all--of all, except charlotte von stein! she sat at goethe's side, and he often turned his lightning glance on her, as though speaking to her alone, but charlotte felt only that what he said was intended for all. had he but attempted to whisper a single word in her ear, had he given her hand a gentle pressure, had he but made her some secret sign understood by herself only, and permitted her to feel that something peculiar and mysterious was going on in which they two alone participated! in society, goethe had formerly, before his journey to italy, availed himself of every little opportunity that arose to press her hand and whisper loving words in her ear. to-day he was wanting in these delicate little attentions--in these little love-signals, for which she had so often scolded him in former times! she was therefore very quiet, and did not join in the applause of the rest of the company. but, amidst the admiration evoked by his eloquence, goethe listened only to hear a word of approval from charlotte, and, when his friend still remained silent, his animation vanished and his countenance darkened. but they had loved each other too long and too tenderly not to be alarmed by the thought of a possible coolness and separation. true, charlotte often wept in the solitude of her chamber, and accused him of ingratitude; true, goethe often grumbled in silence, and lamented over charlotte's irritability and sensitiveness, but yet he was earnest in his desire to avoid all estrangement, and to restore to their hearts the beautiful harmony that had so long existed. he resumed the habit that had formerly given him so much delight--that of writing to charlotte almost daily. but her sensitive woman's ear detected a difference in the melody of his letters; they were no longer written in the same high, passionate key, but had been toned down to a low, melancholy air. her own replies were of a like character, and this annoyed goethe greatly. he abused the gloomy skies of germany, and lamented over the lost paradise of italy; and charlotte could not help comprehending that she was the cause of his discontent and anger. but still he visited her almost every day, and was always animated and communicative in her society. he read portions of his newly-commenced drama "torquato tasso," with her, told her of his plans for the future, and permitted her to take part in his intellectual life. then she would soon forget her little sorrows and her woman's sensitiveness, and become once more the intelligent friend, with the clear judgment and profound understanding. on an occasion of this kind, goethe requested his "beloved friend" to return the letters he had written to her during the two years of his sojourn in italy. charlotte looked at him in astonishment. "my letters--the dear letters i have kept so sacred that i have not shown a single one of them to my most intimate friends--these letters you desire me to return?" "certainly, my dear, i beg you to do so. i intend having an account of my italian journey published--have also promised wieland some fragments for his "mercury," and, in order to prepare these for the press, it will only be necessary to have the letters i have written to you copied." "can this be possible, wolf?" asked she, in dismay. "do you really intend to have the letters, written by you to me, read and copied by a third person?" "as a matter of course, i will first correct these letters, and leave nothing in them addressed to you personally and intended for your dear eyes only," replied goethe, laughing. "i always had this end in view while writing to you in italy, and you will have observed that my letters were always divided, to a certain extent, into two portions. the first is addressed to you only, my dear charlotte--to you, my friend and my beloved--and this was filled with the words of love and longing that glowed in my own heart. the second portion is a mere narrative and description of what i have seen, heard, and done while in italy, and was intended for publication." "but this is unheard of," cried charlotte, angrily; "this experiment does great honor to your cold calculation, but very little to your heart." "charlotte, i am not aware of ever having done any thing discreditable to my heart in my relations to you!" "relations to me!" she repeated, offended. "certainly, this is an entirely new name for the ardent love you once protested could never expire in your heart." "charlotte, dear, beloved charlotte!" he sighed, sadly, "do take pity on us both. be yourself once more. you were once so noble, so lofty-minded; do not now fall from this high estate, but take a quiet, unprejudiced view of our relations. why should you reproach me for desiring to have a portion of your letters published? will they be any the less your letters on that account?" "they are not, and never were mine!" she replied, angrily; "they merely chanced to be addressed to me--these letters, which you intended for publication even while writing them, and which were so well concocted that it will only be necessary to extract a few little elements of feeling and sentiment to make the manuscript complete and ready for the press. and i, poor, blinded simpleton, imagined that this goethe, who could leave me to go to italy--i imagined that this goethe, whom my soul had followed with its sighs of affectionate longing, still loved me. i was generous enough to believe that the thoughts, love, and confidence contained in his letters were addressed to me only; but now i must learn that i was nothing more to him than the representative of the great hydra-headed monster, the public, and that he was only informing it when he seemed to be speaking to me!" "charlotte, i conjure you, do not continue to talk in this manner; you cannot know how your words grieve my heart! charlotte, by the brightest and most beautiful years of my life, i conjure you, do not step forth from the pure and radiant atmosphere in which you have heretofore appeared to me. i conjure you, my friend, by all the adoration, esteem, and love which i have consecrated to you, do not descend from the altar on which my love has placed you; do not join the throng of those women who are unnecessarily jealous when they fancy their lovers not quite so tender as usual. you are not one of them; remain, therefore, on your altar, and allow me to worship you as i have heretofore done." "you do well to say 'as you have done,' but as you no longer do," cried charlotte, bursting into tears, without considering that woman's tears are but poor weapons to use against men, and that the woman must be very young, very beautiful, and the object of great adoration, who can afford to disfigure her countenance with tears and clouds of discontent. goethe looked at her in surprise and alarm, and his glance rested on her countenance inquiringly, as though seeking the charm that had formerly attracted him so irresistibly. then, as she fastened her tear-stained eyes on his countenance, he started and turned hastily aside, as though some unwelcome vision had arisen before him. the conviction now dawned on charlotte that she had committed a grave error; she quickly dried her eyes, and, with that power peculiar to women, she even forced a smile to her lips. "you turn from me, wolf," said she, in tender tones, "you do not reply?" "my dear," said he, gently, "as you have asked me no question, what can i answer? you asserted that i no longer loved and adored you as in former days. to such an assertion, charlotte, i can make no reply; i would consider it a sacrilegious breach of the union that has been sanctified and confirmed by long years of love and fidelity, and that should be elevated above all doubt and protestations." "then you love me, wolf? you still love me?" "yes," said he; and it seemed to charlotte as though he had laid a peculiar emphasis on this little word. it sounded like another echo of the ominous whisperings of her mirror. for a moment both were silent, perhaps because charlotte was too completely absorbed in her own thoughts. when they conversed again it was on an entirely different topic. after a short time goethe tenderly took leave of charlotte, and left the house; he hurried through the streets and entered the park, to the densest and most obscure retreats of which he had so often revealed his thoughts in past years. this park had been goethe's true and discreet friend for many years, and he now turned his footsteps once more toward the favorite retreat in which he had so often poured out his sighs and complaints in former days, when charlotte had cruelly repelled the advances of her tender friend and lover. goethe suffered to-day also, but his sufferings were not to be compared to those he had formerly experienced in the same shady avenues. then his soul was filled with a despair that was tempted with hope and joyousness. for was there ever a true lover whose ladylove had driven him to despair by her cruelty, who did not nevertheless entertain a joyous hope that her hard heart would at last be softened, and that he would yet become a _happy_ lover? then these avenues had often resounded with goethe's sighs and lamentations, and there the tears of wounded pride had often filled his eyes. to-day he neither sighed nor lamented, and his eyes were tearless, but he looked gloomy, and an expression of annoyance rather than of sadness rested on his countenance. in silence he walked to and fro with hasty strides; suddenly he raised the light cane which he held in his hand and struck a sprig of blossoming woodbine from a vine that overhung the walk, so violently that it fell to his feet; and then his lips murmured: "she is very much changed. she has become an old woman, and i--i cannot make myself ridiculous by playing the lover--no!" he ceased speaking, without having finished his sentence, as if alarmed at his own words. he then stooped down, picked up the sprig of woodbine, and regarded it thoughtfully. "poor blossom," said he, gently, "i did wrong to strike you! you are not beautiful, but you are very fragrant, and it is for this reason probably that the kindly and delicate feeling of the people has given you so pretty a name. they call you, 'the longer, the dearer!' i will not tread you under foot, you poor 'the longer the dearer;' your fragrance is very delightful, and somehow it seems to me as though charlotte's eyes were gazing at me from out your tiny cups." he placed the flower in a button-hole of his coat, and, as though his little "the longer the dearer" blossom had given him a satisfactory solution of his heart-troubles, he left the shady retreat and went toward an opening in the park. he walked rapidly, and was on the point of turning into a path that led to his garden-house, when he saw a young girl approaching from the other side of the road. she was unknown to goethe, and her whole appearance indicated that she did not belong to that favored class that claims to constitute what is called "society." the simple calico dress which enveloped her full and graceful figure, the coarse shoes in which her little feet were enclosed, and the white and delicate little ungloved hands, proclaimed that she did not belong to "society." moreover, the light little hat which ladies of rank wore jauntily on one side of their powdered hair at that time, was wanting. her hair was uncovered, and surrounded her lovely little head with a mass of sunny curls. her countenance was radiant with youth, innocence, and freshness; she blushed as her eyes encountered goethe's lightning glances. her large blue eyes rested on him with an expression of gentle entreaty and tender humility, and a soft smile played about her pouting, crimson lips. this youthful, charming apparition resembled but little the pale, faintly-colored blossoms of the flower which he wore in his button-hole; she was more like the rich mossrose-bud which nestled on the fair girl's bosom, and with which she had confined the two ends of the lace shawl that hung loosely over her beautiful shoulders. goethe now stood before her, regarding her with inquiring, wondering glances. with a graceful movement the young girl raised her right hand, in which she held a folded paper. "mr. privy-councillor, i beg you to take this and read it." "what does this document contain?" asked goethe, in tender tones. "it is a petition from my brother in jena," murmured her clear, silvery voice. "i promised him to give it to the privy-councillor myself, and to entreat him right earnestly to grant my dear brother's request. dear privy-councillor, please do so. we are such a poor and unhappy family; we are compelled to work so hard, and we earn so little. we have to study such close economy, and there are so few holidays in our life! but it would be a glorious fête-day for us all if the privy-councillor would grant what my dear brother so ardently desires." goethe's eyes were still fastened on the lovely apparition that stood before him like an embodied psyche. in her rich, youthful beauty she seemed to him like some myrtle-blossom wafted over from sunny italy. "what is your name, my dear girl?" asked he. "my name is christiane vulpius, mr. privy-councillor," murmured she, casting her eyes down. "not the daughter of that good-for-nothing drunkard, who--" "sir, he is my father," said she, interrupting him in such sad, reproachful tones, that goethe felt heartily ashamed of his inconsiderate words, and took off his hat as he would have done to a lady of rank. "forgive me, mademoiselle, i did wrong. excuse my thoughtless words. but now i can readily comprehend that your family must be poor and unhappy. it seems to me that misfortune has, however, not dared to touch these rosy cheeks and lustrous eyes with its rude fingers." she smiled. "i am still so young, sir; youth is light-hearted and hopes for better times. and then, when i grow weary of our dark little room, i run here to the park. the park is every one's garden, and a great delight for us poor people. here i skip about, seek flowers in the grass, and sing with the birds. is not this enough to make me happy, although hard work, poor fare, and much abuse, await me at home?" "but it seems to me," said goethe, taking the hand, which still held the petition, gently in his own, "it seems to me that this fair hand has no right to complain of hard work. it is as white as a lily." "and this hand has made a great many lilies," rejoined she, smiling. "my work consists in making flowers. i love flowers, and roam through the woods all day long on sundays, seeking beautiful flowers to copy from. my field-flower bouquets are great favorites, and the milliners pay me well for them. they are very fashionable, and the high-born ladies at court all desire to wear field-flower bouquets on their hats. day before yesterday i furnished a field-flower bouquet, which the milliner sold to madame the baroness von stein, on the same day, and yesterday i saw it on her hat." the hand which but now had clasped the white tapering fingers of the young girl so tenderly, trembled a little, and a shadow flitted over his smiling countenance. madame von stein's name sounded strangely on the young girl's lips; it seemed like a warning of impending danger. he looked grave, and released her hand, retaining only the petition. "tell me what it contains," said he, pointing to the paper. "i would rather read it from your lips than from the paper?" "mr. privy-councillor, it concerns my poor, dear brother. he is such a brave, good fellow, and so diligent and learned. he lives in jena, translates books from the italian and french, and sells them to publishing houses. the office of secretary of the university library, in jena, is now vacant, and my brother desires it, and would be so happy if he should receive the appointment! he has dared to address you, mr. councillor, and to entreat you earnestly to use your influence to secure him the situation. i have undertaken to deliver the petition, and to say a great many fine phrases besides. ah, mr. privy-councillor, i had written down a whole speech that i intended to make to you." "then let me hear this speech, my fair girl. the nightingales and bullfinches have hushed their songs, and are waiting for you to begin." "sir," murmured she, blushing, "i do not know why it is, but i cannot." he bent forward, closer to her side, so close that the wind blew her golden locks against his cheek. "why is it that you cannot, my fair child? why not let me hear your beautiful little speech?" "because, because--i have hitherto only seen you at a distance, and then you looked so exalted, and walked with so much stiffness and dignity, that i entertained the most profound respect for the proud old privy-councillor, and now that i am near you i see, well--" "well?" "well," cried she, with a joyous peal of laughter, "i see that you are much too young, that my speech is entirely inappropriate." "why so?" asked goethe, smiling. "try it, let me hear it, nevertheless." she looked up at him with an inquiring, childlike expression. "do you believe that my beautiful speech would influence you and promote my brother's interests? if you believe that, i will speak, for my brother is a dear, good fellow, and i will do any thing to make him happy!" "then let us hear it," replied goethe, delighted with the fair young girl, whose beauty, grace, and naïveté, reminded him of the lovely leonora in rome. yes, it was she, it was leonora, with this difference only, that this fair girl was a northern version of the leonora of the south, but was none the less beautiful on that account. "oh, leonora, you child of the sun and of nature, am i really to be so blessed, am i to find you here again--here where my heart was congealing, and longing for the sunny rays of delight from a fair woman's eyes? yes, leonora, this is your sweet smile and kindling, childlike glance; it is you, and yet it is not you. god and nature were reflected in your countenance, a whole heaven shone in your features. fair nature is reflected in this lovely countenance also, but i seek the divinity in vain, and instead of heaven i find the joyous earth enthroned therein!" goethe was occupied with these thoughts while christiane, blushing, smiling, half-ashamed at times, and then again bold and fearless, was declaiming her well-prepared speech. too much of what was passing in goethe's mind must have been reflected in the tender, ardent glances which rested on her countenance, for she suddenly broke off in the midst of a sentence, murmured a few embarrassed words, blushed, courtesied, and then turned and fled like a startled doe. chapter vi. the two poets. "she is bewitching," murmured goethe, as the beautiful girl was lost to view behind the green bushes that skirted the avenue. "i had no idea that dull, sober weimar contained such a treasure, and--" "goethe! welcome, goethe!" cried the joyous voice of a woman behind him; "how delighted i am to meet you here!" he turned hastily, and saw madame von kalb standing before him, on the arm of a tall, fair-haired gentleman. this was the cause of christiane's flight. the beautiful girl had seen this lady and gentleman coming. she was, therefore, not only beautiful, she was also discreet and modest. goethe said this to himself, while he kissed madame von kalb's extended hand, and gayly responded to her greeting. "the two gentlemen are, of course, acquainted," said she. "i believe i have never had the honor," replied goethe, who had again assumed the cold reserve of the privy-councillor. "who does not know the greatest and most celebrated of germany's poets?" said the other gentleman, a slight flush suffusing itself over his pale, hollow cheeks. "i have known the poet goethe for a long time; i was present when he visited the charles school in stuttgart. he, of course, did not observe the poor scholar, but the latter was delighted to see the poet goethe. and he is now delighted to make the acquaintance of the privy-councillor goethe!" perhaps there was a slight touch of irony in these words, but his large blue eyes beamed as mildly and lovingly as ever. a slight shadow flitted over goethe's brow. "you are right," said he, "in reminding me that there are hours in which the poet must be contented to perform the duties of an official. by the document which i hold in my hand, you will perceive, my lady, that i am an official who has duties to fulfil, and i trust that you will, therefore, excuse me." he bowed formally, and passed on in the direction of his garden-house. "he is becoming colder and more reserved each day," said madame von kalb. "he has been completely transformed since i first saw him here in weimar. then, radiant and handsome as apollo, flaming with enthusiasm, carrying all hearts with him by his impetuosity and genial manner--then we were forced to believe that earth had no barriers or fetters for him, but that he could spread his pinions and soar heavenward at any moment; now, a stiff, unapproachable, privy-councillor, reserved and grandly dignified! schiller, no woman could change so fearfully, or become so false to herself! goethe's appearance has saddened me so much that i feel like crying!" "and i," said schiller, angrily, "i feel like calling myself a simpleton for having addressed a kindly greeting to so haughty a gentleman. he despises me, and looks down upon the unknown dramatic writer with contempt; he--" "frederick," said madame von kalb, gently, "my frederick, such petty envy does not beseem a genius like yourself; you--" "nor do i envy him," said schiller, interrupting her; "in my breast also glows the holy fire that was not stolen from heaven by prometheus for him alone! my spirit also has pinions that would bear it aloft to the sun, if--yes, if it were not for the paltry fetters that bind my feet to earth!" "and yet, my beloved friend," rejoined charlotte, passionately, "and yet i will be only too happy to share these fetters with you--and i would rather live with you in a modest cottage, than in the most magnificent palace at the side of an unloved man." "you are an angel, charlotte," murmured schiller; "you over-estimate me, and i know only too well how little i resemble the sublime image your lively imagination has made of me." he did not look at charlotte while uttering these words, his manner was embarrassed, and his eyes turned heavenward. he suffered charlotte to lead him by the hand, and walked at her side like a dreaming, confiding child. she led him to the darkest and most solitary avenue--to the same retreat in which goethe had walked restlessly to and fro but a short time before. the little branch of woodbine which goethe had struck down with his cane, and from which he had plucked a blossom and placed it in his button-hole, still lay in the middle of the road. charlotte carelessly trod it under foot, never dreaming that these crushed blossoms could have told a tale that might have served her as a warning. but of women's hearts the same may be said that mirabeau said of princes: "they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing!" no; they, too, learn nothing and forget nothing, these poor women's hearts. never have they learned by the fate of another woman that love is not immortal, and that the vows of men, as horace says, "are wafted away like the leaves of the forest." never have they forgotten these vows, and on the leaves of the forest do they still erect air-castles, which they fondly hope will stand forever. they seated themselves on a rustic bench that had been placed in a flowery niche, cut out of the hedge that skirted the path in which they had been walking. there they sat, hand in hand, charlotte's eyes fastened on schiller's noble, thoughtful countenance, with an expression of mingled pain and tenderness. "frederick, you have nothing to say to me?" he raised his eyes slowly, and in the vehemence of her own feelings she failed to observe that his glance was somewhat embarrassed and anxious. "it is very beautiful here," he said in low tones. "this solitude, this eloquent silence of nature, is very delightful, particularly when i can enjoy it at your side, my beloved friend. our souls are like two harps that are tuned to the same tone, and are so near together that, when the strings of the one are touched, those of the other echo a response in the same accord." "god grant that it may ever be so, my frederick! god grant that no storm break in upon the harmony of these harps!" "and from whence should such a storm come, my dear friend, beloved sister of my soul? no, i am sure that this can never be. the love which unites us is exalted above all change and illusion. i can conceive of no purer or more beautiful relation than that of a brother to his sister, when they are loving, and live in a proper understanding of their duties to each other. let this thought truly console us and strengthen our hearts, charlotte, if other wishes entertained by me for a long time, as you well know, should never be fulfilled. charlotte, i am not one of those whose lives flow on in a smooth, unbroken current, and over whose desires auspicious stars shine in the heavens. to forego has ever been my fate, and you, my dearest, have given me painful instruction in this bitter lesson. you will remember how i knelt at your feet in mannheim, passionately entreating you to sunder the fetters which bound you to the unloved man, and to become mine, my wife! it was, however, in vain; and now, when your heart is at last inclined to grant the fulfilment of our wishes and hopes--now, when you would dare to become my wife, another obstacle presents itself that seems to render it impossible that we should ever be outwardly united." "what obstacle, frederick? who can prevent it?" "your husband, charlotte. it seems that he loves you truly, and cannot bear to entertain the thought of separation." "have you spoken with him, frederick? have you honestly and openly told him of our wishes, and have you entreated him to fulfil them?" "i have often attempted to do so, but he always avoided coming to the point. whenever he observed that i was endeavoring to turn our conversation in that direction, he would break off abruptly and introduce another topic of conversation. this convinced me that he loved you dearly, and the thought that i am about to grieve this good and noble man and rob him of a treasure that my own feelings teach me must be very dear to him, pains me to the heart's core." "frederick," said she, softly, "how fearful it is to see the most beautiful flowers of spring fade and die, sometimes cut off by a nipping frost, sometimes parched by the too great warmth of the sun!" "i do not understand you, charlotte," said schiller, in a little more confusion than was entirely compatible with his "not understanding." "and i," cried she, with sparkling eyes, "i wish i did not understand you! tell me, frederick, is your heart really mine? are your feelings toward me unchanged?" he raised his eyes, and gazed into her agitated countenance earnestly and thoughtfully. "charlotte, you ask a question which god alone can answer. who can say of himself that he has a true and exact knowledge of his own feelings? all is subject to change; the sea has its ebb and flow, the sun rises and sets. but the sea ever and again returns to the beach it had before deserted, and the sun ever rises again after the dark night. as the sea and sun, with all their changes, are still eternally constant, so it is also with true love. at times it would seem as though it were withdrawing, and leaving a bleak, sandy desert behind; in the next hour its mighty waves surge back impetuously over the barren strand, chanting, in holy organ-tones, the song that love is eternal." "wondrous words!" cried charlotte; "the paraphrase to a glorious song which i hope the poet frederick schiller will one day sing to the world! but i ask the poet, whether these are also the words of the man frederick schiller? did the hymn to love, just uttered by the poet's lips, also resound in the heart of the man, and was it addressed to me?" "and why these questions, my dearest? the poet and the man are one, and the utterances of the poet's lips are the thoughts of the man; when he consecrates an enthusiastic hymn to love, while at your side, be assured that it is addressed to you!" he laid his arm around her neck, and drew her head to his breast, as he had so often done before in hours of tenderness. but charlotte felt that there was, nevertheless, a difference between then and now: the arm that embraced her did not rest on her neck with the same warm pressure as of yore. she, however, repressed the sigh that had nearly escaped her lips, nestled closer to his bosom, and whispered in low tones: "frederick, your hymn has found an echo in my heart; frederick, i am very grateful to god for your love!" he was silent, his only response was a warmer pressure of the arm entwined around her neck. then both were silent. deep stillness reigned; it seemed as though nature were holding divine service in her green halls under the dome of heaven; at first with silent prayer, then a joyous song of praise resounded from the hidden chorus in the foliage of the tall trees, until the breeze rustled through the leaves in holy organ-tones, and silenced the feathered songsters. to these deep organ-tones, to this rustling of the wind in the foliage, listened the two lovers, who sat there on the little rustic bench in a trance of delight and devotion. both were silent, and yet so eloquent in their silence. he, with his pale countenance turned upward, gazing intently at the blue dome of heaven, as though seeking to fathom its mysteries; she, with her head resting on his bosom, seeking no other, now that she had found this heaven. but the wind now rustled through the trees in deeper and more solemn tones, and awakened charlotte from her sweet repose. a leaf torn from the branches by the wind was borne against her cheek; it glided over her face like the touch of a ghostly finger, and fell into her hands, which lay folded in her lap. she started up in alarm, and looked down at this gift of the wind and trees. they had given her a withered, discolored leaf. like the harbinger of coming autumn had this withered leaf touched her face, and rudely awakened her from her heavenly summer dream. "a bad omen," she murmured, tearing the leaf to pieces with her trembling fingers. "what does this murmuring mean, charlotte?" asked schiller, who had been completely absorbed in his own thoughts, and had not observed this little by-play in the great tragedy of the heart. "what alarmed you so suddenly?" "nothing, it is nothing," said she, rising. "come, my friend, let us go; i fear that a storm is gathering in the heavens." he looked up at the clear blue sky in amazement. "i do not see a single cloud." "so much the better, frederick!" rejoined charlotte, quickly, "so much the better! nothing will therefore prevent our taking the contemplated drive to rudolstadt." her large eyes fastened a quick, penetrating glance on his countenance while uttering these words, and she saw that he colored slightly, and avoided encountering her gaze. "we will carry out our intention of driving to rudolstadt to-morrow, will we not, my friend? i have been promising to pay madame von lengefeld a visit for a long time, and it will afford me great pleasure to see her two daughters again. caroline von beulwitz is a noble young woman, and bears the cruel fate entailed upon her by her unfortunate marriage with true heroism. at the side of this matured summer-rose stands her sister charlotte, like a fair young blossom of the spring-time." schiller, his countenance radiant with pure joy, gave charlotte a tender, grateful look; and this look pierced her heart, and kindled the consuming flames of jealousy. poor charlotte! the wind had dashed a withered autumn-leaf against her face, and but now she had called the woman who was henceforth to be her rival "a fair young blossom of the spring-time." "how beautifully you paint with a few strokes of the brush, charlotte!" said schiller, gayly. "your portrait is an excellent one, and portrays madame von lengefeld's daughters as they really are. caroline, as the full-blown rose, and charlotte as a lovely, fragrant violet." "and which of these flowers do you most admire?" "it is hard to choose between them," replied schiller, laughing. "it is best to admire them together; i can scarcely conceive of their being separated; separation would destroy the harmony of the picture!" charlotte felt relieved. then he loved neither. his heart had not chosen between them. "i am so glad," said she, "that my friends chance to be yours also! how did you become acquainted with the von lengefeld family?" "we are old acquaintances!" replied schiller, smiling. "i made the acquaintance of these ladies four years ago while residing in madame von wollzogen's house, soon after my flight from stuttgart, and it was her son, my friend, william von wollzogen, who took me to see them in rudolstadt."[47] "rumor says that mr. william von wollzogen loves his cousin caroline devotedly." "and for once, rumor has, as i believe, told the truth. wollzogen loves his beautiful cousin passionately." "and caroline, does she love him?" "who can fathom the heart of this noble woman! her lips are sealed by the solemn vow which united her with her unloved husband, and caroline von beulwitz is too noble and chaste a woman to become untrue even to an unloved husband, and--" schiller hesitated; he now felt how deeply his words must have wounded the woman who stood at his side--the woman over whom be had just pronounced judgment. but women have a wonderful knack of not hearing what they do not wish to hear, and of smiling even when stabbed to the heart. charlotte von kalb smiled on schiller as though his words had not wounded her in the slightest degree. "and has charlotte, has this poor child, at last recovered from her unhappy love? have the bleeding wounds of her young heart at last been healed?" madame von kalb, her countenance wreathed in smiles, had drawn the dagger from her own heart and plunged it into her lover's. "paete, paete, non dolet!" he felt the blow and found it impossible to force a smile to his lips. "what do you mean?" asked he, gloomily. "who has dared to wound the heart of this fair girl?" "i am surprised, indeed, that you should have heard nothing of this affair, my dear friend," said charlotte, the smile on her lips becoming more radiant as she felt that the dagger was entering deeper and deeper. "charlotte von lengefeld was affianced to a noble young man whom she loved devotedly, and it was the most ardent wish of both to be united for life. but, unfortunately, the wealth of their feelings formed a cutting contrast to the poverty of their outward circumstances. madame von lengefeld, a lady of experience and discretion, informed the lovers that their union was out of the question, as they were both poor. yielding to stern necessity they separated, although with many tears and bleeding hearts. the young man entered the hessian army and went to america, never to return. the young girl remained behind in sorrow and sadness, and, as it is said, took a solemn vow never to marry another, as fate had separated her from the man she loved." and after charlotte, with the cruelty characteristic of all women when they love and are jealous, had dealt this last blow, she smiled and gave her lover a tender glance. but his countenance remained perfectly composed, and charlotte's narrative seemed rather to have appealed to the imagination of the poet than to the heart of the man. "it is true," said he, softly, "each human heart furnishes material for a tragedy. all life is, in reality, nothing more than a grand tragedy, whose author is the eternal spirit of the universe. we, little children of humanity, are nothing more than the poor actors to whom this eternal spirit has given life for no other purpose than that we might play the rôles which he has assigned us. we poor actors fancy ourselves independent beings, yes, even the lords of creation, and talk of free agency and of the sublime power of the human will. this free agency is nothing more than the self-worship of the poor slave.--come, charlotte," cried schiller, suddenly awakening from his thoughtful contemplation; "come, my dear friend, let us go. thoughts are burning in my heart and brain, the poet is being aroused within the man. i must write; work only can restore me to peace and tranquillity!" "do you no longer find peace and tranquillity with me, frederick? have they ceased to ring the festive bells of our union of hearts? do they no longer call our souls together, that they may impart light and warmth to each other like two rays of sunshine?" "charlotte, souls too are untuned at times, although the accord of love is ever the same. remember this, and do not be angry if storms should sometimes break in upon the harmony of our souls." "i am never angry with you," said she, in tones of mingled sadness and tenderness. "your peace and your happiness is all i desire, and to give you this shall be the sole endeavor of my whole life. i believe that this is the holy mission with which fate has entrusted me, and for which i have been placed in the world. to do my utmost to add to your happiness and to give joyousness to your heart and gayety to your soul. yes, you shall be gay! your good genius smiles on your labors and relieves the laurel-crowned head of the poet of all care, giving him honor and glory. but i--i will give you happiness and gayety, for i love you; and you, you have told me a thousand times that you loved me, and that my heart was the home of your happiness. i will believe this sweet assurance, frederick, and will hold fast to it forever and evermore. i will look into the future with a glad heart, hoping that we may, at last, overcome all obstacles and belong to each other wholly. you say that my husband always avoids this subject, refusing to understand you. i will compel him to understand us. i, myself, will tell him of our hopes and wishes!" "no, charlotte," said he, "this duty devolves upon me! a time will come when all his endeavors to avoid this subject will be futile, and i will avail myself of this moment to speak for us both. do not look at me so doubtingly, charlotte. you have instructed me in the trying art of patience! be patient yourself, and never forget that the stars of our love will shine forever!" chapter vii. the first meeting. on the next morning schiller and madame von kalb drove to rudolstadt to pay the lengefeld family a visit. charlotte did not fail to observe that schiller's countenance grew brighter and brighter the nearer they approached the little thuringian village, that was so beautifully situated in the midst of wooded hills. madame von lengefeld received her welcome guests, at the door of her pretty little house, with dignity and kindness. behind her stood her two lovely daughters; the eyes of both fastened on frederick schiller, to whom they extended their hands, blushingly bidding him welcome. charlotte von kalb, although conversing in an animated manner with madame von lengefeld, nevertheless listened to every word schiller uttered, and observed his every glance. she heard him greet the two sisters with uniform cordiality, and she saw that his gaze rested on both with the same kindliness. madame von kalb's countenance assumed a more joyous expression, and a voice in her heart whispered, exultingly: "he does not love her, he has no preference for either one of them. he told me the truth, he entertains a brother's affection for _them_, but his tenderness and love are for _me_!" and now that her heart had come to this joyful conclusion, charlotte von kalb's whole manner was gay and animated; she laughed and jested with the two young ladies, was devoted in her attentions to madame von lengefeld, and treated schiller with the most tender consideration. her conversation was very gay and witty, and the most piquant and brilliant remarks were constantly falling like sparkling gems from her smiling lips. "how intelligent and amiable this lady is!" said the elder of the two sisters, caroline von beulwitz, to schiller, with whom they were walking in the flower-garden, behind the house, while dame von kalb remained with madame von lengefeld in the parlor. schiller walked between the sisters, a pretty snow-white hand resting on either arm. his countenance shone with happiness, and his step was light and buoyant. "i should like to ascend straightway into heaven with you two," said he, joyously; "and i think it highly probable that i will do so directly. nothing would be impossible for me to-day, and it seems to me as though heaven had descended to earth, so that i would have no obstacles to overcome, and could walk right in, with you two ladies on my arms." "then let us return to the house at once, in order to guard against any such ascension," said caroline von beulwitz, smiling. "oh, caroline," exclaimed charlotte, laughing joyously, "i wish we could take this flight to heaven! how surprised they would be, and how they would look for us, while we three were taking a walk up there in the clouds!" "and how angry madame von kalb would be with us, for having enticed her dear friend away!" said caroline, ironically. "i would enjoy it all the more on that very account," rejoined charlotte, laughing. "and i, too," protested schiller. "it would be very pleasant if we could sometimes cast aside all earthly fetters and rise, like the bird, high above the noisy, sorrowing earth, and float in the sunbright ether with the loved one in our arms. my dear friends, why not make this ascension to-day?" "to-day! no, not to-day," said charlotte, exchanging a meaning glance with her sister. "it will not do to leave the earth to-day, will it, caroline? we expect to have too pleasant a time here below to think of making the ascension to-day!" "what does this mystery--what do these sly glances mean?" asked schiller. "something extraordinary is about to occur. tell me, lolo, what does all this mean?" "i will tell nothing," said charlotte, laughing merrily, and shaking her brown locks. "it is useless to ask me." "but you, dear caroline, on whose sweet lips the truth and goodness are ever enthroned, you, at least, will tell me whether i am wrong in supposing that a mystery exists that will be unravelled to-day." "yes, my dear friend," said she, smiling, "there is a little surprise in store for you, but i hope you are satisfied that we would never do any thing that--" "and i believe," said her younger sister, interrupting her, "i believe that the solution of this mystery is at hand, for i hear a carriage approaching. listen, it has stopped at our door! yes, this is the mystery! come, my friend, the solution awaits you!" she was about to lead schiller to the house, when caroline gently drew her back. "one moment, lolo! tell me, my friend, do you place sufficient confidence in us, to follow without question and without uneasiness, even when we confess that we are leading you to the solution of a mystery?" schiller clasped the right hands of the two sisters and pressed them to his heart. "i will gladly and proudly follow you wherever you may choose to lead me. i place such confidence in you both that i could lay my life and eternal happiness in your dear hands, and bid defiance to all the mysteries of the world!" "but yet you would like to know what this mystery is, would you not?" asked lolo. "no," replied schiller, with an expression of abiding faith; "no, the solution of the mystery which my fair friends have in store for me will unquestionably be agreeable. let us go." "we are much obliged to you for your confidence, schiller," said caroline. "we will, however, not permit you to be surprised, as the other ladies had determined you should be. it will depend upon your own free-will whether you enter into the plans agreed upon by your friends, or not. schiller, you heard a carriage drive up to our door a few moments since? do you know who were in that carriage? madame von stein and goethe!" "is not that a surprise?" cried lolo, laughing. "yes," he said, with an expression of annoyance, "yes, a surprise, but not an agreeable one. the privy-councillor goethe showed no desire to cultivate my acquaintance, and i would not have him think that i desire to intrude myself on his notice. if he deems my acquaintance undesirable, the world is wide enough for us both, and we can easily avoid each other. as much as i admire goethe's genius, i am not humble enough to forget that i too am a poet to whom some consideration is due. nothing could be less becoming than for schiller to advance while goethe recedes, or even stands still." "but this is not so, schiller; it could not be!" exclaimed charlotte earnestly, while caroline gazed at him with sparkling eyes as though rejoicing in his proud bearing and energetic words. "join with me, caroline, in assuring him that is not the case! tell him how it is." "my friend," said charlotte, in a low voice, "goethe knew as little of your presence here as you of his. the two ladies, madame von stein and madame von kalb, arranged the whole affair, and we were only too glad to assist them in bringing together the two greatest poets of our day, the two noblest spirits of the century, in order that they might become acquainted, and lay aside the prejudices they had entertained concerning each other. while we are conversing with you here, this same explanation is being made to goethe by the ladies in the house. charlotte von stein is also there, and, as you will readily believe, holds the honor of her beloved friend schiller in too high estimation to permit goethe to suppose for a moment that you had connived at this meeting, or were anxious to make an acquaintance which he might deem undesirable." "come, my friends, let us return to the house," said schiller, smiling sadly. "it is but proper that i should make the first advances to my superior in rank and ability, and--" he ceased speaking, for at this moment goethe and the two charlottes appeared on the stairway. "you see," whispered caroline, "goethe thinks as you do, and he, too, is willing to make the first advances." in the meantime goethe had walked down into the garden, still accompanied by the two ladies, with whom he was engaged in an animated conversation. but when he saw schiller approaching, goethe hastened forward to meet him. "madame von kalb has reproached me for having withdrawn so abruptly when we met in the park a few days since," said goethe, in kindly tones. "i admit that i was wrong, but, at the same time, i must confess that it did not seem appropriate to me that we should make each other's acquaintance under such circumstances--as it were by the merest chance." "and yet it is chance again that enables me to greet the poet goethe, to-day," replied schiller, quickly. "but this time it has been brought about by fair hands," cried goethe, bowing gracefully to the ladies, "and, with the ancients, i exclaim: 'what the great gods vouchsafe can only be good and beautiful!'" but, as though he had conceded enough to his friends' wishes, and shown schiller sufficient consideration, goethe now turned again to the ladies, and resumed the conversation in which he had been engaged on entering the garden. they had been questioning him about madame angelica kaufmann, the painter, and goethe was telling them of her life, her genius, and her nobility of mind, with great animation and in terms of warm approval. afterward, when the company were assembled around the table at dinner in the garden pavilion, goethe, at charlotte von stein's request, told them of his travels, of the eternal city, and of that charming life in italy which he considered the only one worthy of an artist, or of any really intellectual man. carried away with enthusiasm, his countenance shone with manly beauty, originating rather from his inward exaltation than from any outward perfection of form and feature. the ladies were fascinated by this handsome countenance, these lustrous eyes, and the eloquent lips which described sunny italy, the land of promise, of art and poetry, in such glowing colors. schiller sat there in silence, listless, his eyes cast down, rarely adding a low word of approval to the enthusiastic applause of the ladies, and never addressing a question or remark to goethe; nor did the latter ever address himself directly to schiller, but spoke to all with the air of a great orator who feels assured that _all_ are listening to his words with deference and admiration. "i am not satisfied with our success to-day," sighed madame von kalb, while returning with schiller to weimar in the evening. "i had promised myself such glorious results from this meeting with goethe. i hoped that you would become friends, learning to love each other, but now you seem to have passed like two stars that chance to meet on their heavenly course, yet journey on without attracting each other. tell me, at least, my dear friend, how you were pleased with goethe." "ask me how i am pleased with a glacier, and whether i feel warm and cheerful in its vicinity. yes, this goethe is a glacier, grand, sublime, and radiant, like mount blanc, but the atmosphere that surrounds him is cold, and the little flowers of attachment that would so gladly blossom are frozen by his grandeur. to be in goethe's society often, would, i confess, make me unhappy. he never descends from this altitude, even when with his most intimate friends. i believe him to be egotistic in an eminent degree. he possesses the gift of enchaining men, and of placing them under obligations to himself, by little as well as great attentions, while he always manages to remain unfettered himself. he manifests his existence in a beneficent manner, but only like a god, without revealing himself--this, it seems to me, is a consistent and systematic rule of action, based on the highest enjoyment of self-love. men should not permit such a being to spring into existence in their midst. this, i confess, makes me detest him, although i love his intellect, and have a high opinion of his ability."[48] "but you will yet learn to love him as a man, frederick." "it is quite possible that i may," said schiller, thoughtfully. "he has awakened a feeling of mingled hatred and love in my bosom--a feeling, perhaps, not unlike that which brutus and cassius may have entertained toward cæsar. i could murder his spirit, and yet love him dearly."[49] while "brutus" was giving utterance to this feeling of mingled hatred and love, "cæsar" was also pronouncing judgment over "brutus;" this judgment was, however, not a combination of hatred and love, but rather of pride and contempt. the hero who had overcome all the difficulties of the road, and whose brow was already entwined with the well-deserved laurel, may have looked down, from the sublime height which he had attained, with some proud satisfaction and pitying contempt upon him who had not yet overcome these difficulties, who had not yet vanquished the demons who opposed his ascent. "my dear wolf," said madame von stein to goethe, while returning to weimar, "i had hoped that you would meet schiller in a more cordial manner. you scarcely noticed him." "i esteem him too highly to meet him with a pretence of cordiality when i really dislike him," replied goethe, emphatically. "i have an antipathy to this man that i neither can nor will overcome." "but goethe is not the man to be influenced by antipathies for which he has no good reasons." "well, then," cried goethe, with an outburst of feeling, such as he had rarely indulged in since his return from italy, "well, then, i have good reasons. schiller destroys what i have toiled to create; he builds up what i fancied i had overthrown--this abominable revolution in the minds of men, this heaven-storming conviviality, this wild glowing, and reeling, so very indistinct and cloudy, so replete with tears, sighs, groans, and shouts, and so antagonistic to lucid, sublime thought, and pure enthusiasm. his 'robbers' i abhor--this franz moor is the deformed creation of powerful but immature talent. i found, on my return from italy, that schiller had flooded germany with the ethic and theatrical paradoxes of which i had long been endeavoring to purify myself. the sensation which these works have excited, the universal applause given to these deformed creations of an intoxicated imagination, alarm me. it seems to me as though my poetic labors were all in vain, and had as well be discontinued at once. for, where lies the possibility of stemming the onward tide impelled by such productions--such strange combinations of genuine worth and wild form? if germany can be inspired by the robber, charles moor, and can relish a monstrous caricature like the brutal franz moor, then it is all over with the pure conceptions of art, which i have sought to attain for myself and my poems--then my labors are useless and superfluous, and had best be discontinued."[50] "but you are speaking of schiller's first works only, my dear friend; his later writings are of a purer and nobler nature. have you not yet read his 'don carlos?'" "i have, and i like it no better than 'the robbers.' it is useless to attempt to reconcile us to each other. intellectually, we are two antipodes, and more than one diameter of the earth lies between and separates us. let us then be considered as the two poles that, in the nature of things, can never be united."[51] "how agitated you are, my dear friend!" sighed charlotte. "it seems there is still something that can arouse you from your olympian repose and heartless equanimity, and recall you to earth." "'_homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto_,'" rejoined goethe, smiling. "yes, charlotte, i learned in italy to appreciate the vast distance between myself and the great gods of olympus, and i say with all humility: 'i am a man, and a stranger to nothing that is human.'" "i wish you had never been in italy," sighed charlotte. "and i," rejoined goethe, "i wish i had never left italy to return to germany, and to exchange a bright sky for a gloomy one." "how cruel you are, goethe!" cried charlotte, bursting into tears. "cruel!" repeated he, in dismay. "good heavens! are we never to understand each other again! does charlotte no longer sympathize with me in my sorrows, as in my joys? can you not comprehend the deep sadness that fills my heart when i think of italy?" "certainly i can," cried charlotte. "since you told me of your love-affair with the beautiful leonora, i comprehend and understand all. i know that you left your heart in italy, and that it is the longing of love that calls you back to the sunny land from the bleak north." he gave her a lingering, reproachful look. "charlotte, it is now my turn to call _you_ cruel, and i can do so with perfect justice. that which you should consider the best proof of my love and friendship--the unreserved and complete confession i made when i told you of this affair--this same confession seems rather to have made you doubt me, than to have carried the conviction to your heart that you are the being i love most dearly on earth!" "i thank god that i have no confession to make to you," cried charlotte. "i have not forgotten you for a moment. my soul and heart were ever true to you, and, while you were kneeling at the feet of the beautiful leonora, i knelt at the feet of god, and entreated him to bless and preserve the faithless man who was perhaps betraying me at that very hour, and who now carries his cruelty so far that he dares to complain and lament over his lost italian paradise in my presence, and--" "charlotte, do not speak so, i conjure you," cried goethe, interrupting her. "you cannot know what incalculable pain your words inflict. my friend, my beloved, is nothing sacred? is every temple to be overthrown? is every ideal to be destroyed? charlotte, be yourself once more; do not give way to this petty jealousy. be the noble, high-souled woman once more, and lay aside these petty weaknesses. know that the holy bond of love in which we are united is indestructible, and still exists even when fair blossoms of earth spring into life beside it. be indulgent with me and with us both, and do not desire that i, at forty years of age, should be an ascetic old man, dead to all the little fleeting emotions of the heart." "these sophistries are incomprehensible to me," said she, sharply, "and it seems to me that what you call fleeting emotions of the heart are simply infidelity and a desecration of the love which you vowed would be eternal and unchangeable." goethe bowed his head sadly. "it really looks as though we could no longer understand each other," said he, gently. "i admit, however, that i am to blame, and beg you to pardon me. in the future i will be more cautious. i will make no more communications calculated to offend you." "that is, you will withdraw your confidence, but you will not cease to do that which must offend me." his countenance quivered, his eyes sparkled with anger, and his cheeks turned pale, but he struggled to repress the indignant words that trembled on his lips. charlotte turned pale with alarm. goethe looked sternly on his beloved for the first time. she read indifference in his features for the first time. a loud cry of anguish escaped her lips, and the tears gushed from her eyes. goethe did not attempt to console her, but sat at her side in silence, his gaze resting gloomily on her countenance. "it is a cruel destiny that women should be compelled to give vent to their grief in tears, for their beauty is seldom enhanced thereby," said he to himself. "the tears of offended love are becoming in youthful faces only, and charlotte's is not youthful enough. she looks old and ugly when she cries!" poor charlotte! late in the evening of this day goethe left his house through a side door that led from his garden into a narrow little street. his hat was pressed down over his forehead, and a long cloak enveloped his figure. in former days, before his trip to italy, he had often slipped through this small door in the early hours of the morning, and in the twilight, to take the most direct and quiet route to his beloved charlotte; the side door had also been often opened to admit the beautiful madame von stein when she came to visit her dear friend goethe. to-day, goethe had waited until it grew so dark that it was impossible that his curious neighbors could observe his departure, and on this occasion he did not direct his footsteps toward the stately house in which madame the baroness von stein resided. he took an entirely different direction, and walked on through streets and alleys until he came to a poor, gloomy, little house. but a light was still burning in one window, and the shadow of a graceful, girlish figure flitted across the closed blind. goethe tapped twice on the window, and then the shadow vanished. in a few moments the door was cautiously opened. had any one stood near he would soon have observed two shadows on the window-blind--two shadows in a close embrace. chapter viii. wilhelmine rietz. they were victorious, the pious rosicrucians and illuminati, who held king frederick william the second entangled in their invisible toils. they governed the land; by their unbounded influence over the king's mind _they_ had become the real kings of prussia. general von bischofswerder stood at the king's side as his most faithful friend and invoker of spirits. wöllner had been ennobled and advanced from the position of chamberlain to that of a minister of prussia, and to him was given the guidance of the heart and conscience of the nation. this promotion of wöllner to the position of minister of all affairs connected with the church and public schools, took place at the end of the year 1788, and the first great act of the newly-appointed minister was the promulgation of the notorious edict of faith, intended to fetter the consciences of men, and prescribing what doctrines appertaining to god and religion they should accept as true and infallible. they were no longer to be permitted to illumine the doctrines of the church with the light of reason, and to reveal what it was intended should remain enveloped in mystical darkness. it was strictly forbidden to subject the commandments of the church and the doctrines of revealed religion to the _fallacious_ tests of reason. unconditional and implicit obedience to the authorities of the church was required and enforced. but the minister von wöllner was far too shrewd a man not to be fully aware that this edict of faith would be received with the greatest dissatisfaction by the people to whom frederick the great had bequeathed freedom of thought and faith, as his best and greatest legacy. he had fettered reason and intelligence in matters appertaining to religion, but he knew that they would seek revenge in severe criticisms and loud denunciations through the public press. it was necessary to prevent this, but how could it be done? wöllner devised the means--the censorship of the press. this guillotine of the mind was erected in prussia, and at the same time the good king of france and doctor guillotine were, from motives of humanity, devising some means of severing the heads of criminals so quickly from their bodies that death would be instantaneous and painless. good king louis the sixteenth and his philanthropical physician invented an instrument which they believed would answer these requirements, and baptized it "guillotine," in honor of its inventor. good king frederick william caused his misanthropical physician wöllner to erect an instrument that should kill the noblest thoughts and mutilate the mind. this guillotine of the mind, called censorship of the press, was wöllner's second stroke of policy. with this instrument he effectually destroyed frederick the great's work of enlightenment; and yet this same pious, holy, orthodox man published the "works of frederick the great," the royal freethinker and mocker at religion. for these works there was, however, no censorship. the publication of frederick the great's writings was a source of great profit to the wily minister von wöllner, who worshipped with greater devotion at another than the shrine before which he bowed the knee in the church--at the shrine of mammon. the great king now lived in his writings only; the men who had served him faithfully, count herzberg above all, had been dismissed from office, and were powerless; the laws which he had made to protect freedom of thought were annulled, the light which he had diffused throughout his kingdom was extinguished, and darkness and night were sinking down over the minds and hearts of a whole nation! the promise which the circle directors had made to the grand-kophta on the night of frederick the great's death was fulfilled: "the kingdom of the church and of the spirits embraced all prussia, and the power and authority of the government were in the hands of the pious fathers. the invisible church and its visible priests now ruled in prussia. the king was restored to the true faith, and lay in the dust at the feet of the invisibles, who ruled him and guided his mind and conscience as they saw fit." there were still a few brave men left who refused to submit to their control, and bade defiance to this guillotine of censorship--men who warred against these murderers of thought and freedom. there was nicolai, and büsching, and leuchsenring, the former instructor of the prince royal, who never wearied of warning the people, and who unceasingly endeavored to arouse those whom the pious executioners desired to destroy. "nicolai's berlin monthly magazine" was the arena of these warriors of enlightenment, and in this magazine the combat against darkness and ignorance was still carried on, in defiance of censorship and the edict of faith. the practical and intelligent editor, nicolai, still attacked these new institutions with bitter sarcasm; the warning voice of leuchsenring was still heard denouncing these rosicrucians. but wöllner's guillotine vanquished them at last, and the "berlin monthly magazine" fell into the basket of the censors, as the heads of the french aristocrats fell into the executioner's basket when severed by the other guillotine in france. but king frederick william the second submitted to the will of the invisibles, and obeyed the commands of the holy fathers, announced to him through their representatives, bischofswerder and wöllner. let these men rule, let them take care of and discipline minds and souls; the king has other things to do. the minds belong to the rosicrucians, but the hearts are the king's. in her palatial residence, "under the linden-trees," in berlin, sat the king's friend, in brilliant attire, her hair dressed with flowers, and her beautiful neck and bare arms of dazzling whiteness adorned with rich jewelry. she was reclining on her sofa, and gazing at her reflection in a large mirror of venetian glass that stood against the wall on the opposite side of the boudoir; the frame of this mirror was of silver, richly studded with pearls and rubies, and was one of the king's latest presents. a proud and happy smile played about her full, rosy lips as she regarded the fair image reflected in this costly mirror. "i am still beautiful," said she, "my lips still glow, and my eyes still sparkle, while _she_ is fading away and dying. why did she dare to become my rival, to estrange the king's heart from me? she well knew that i had been his beloved for long years, and that the king had solemnly vowed never to desert me! she dies with the coronet of a countess on her pale brow, while i still live as madame rietz--as the self-styled wife of a valet. i have life and health, and, although i am not yet a countess, i can still achieve the coveted title. have i not sworn that i will yet become either a countess, a duchess, or, perhaps, even a princess? neither the royal wife of the right nor of the left hand shall prevent me; while i rise, they will descend. while i am riding in my splendid equipage, emblazoned with a coronet, they will be riding to the grave in funeral-cars. and truly, it seems to me that it must be more agreeable to ride in an equipage, even as plain madame rietz, than to journey heavenward as countess ingenheim." she burst into laughter as she said this, and saluted her image in the mirror with a playful nod. the brilliants and rubies on her neck and arms sparkled like stars in the flood of light diffused through the room by the numerous jets of gas in the splendid chandeliers, richly adorned with crystal pendants. this, as well as all the other apartments of wilhelmine rietz's residence, was furnished with a degree of luxury and splendor befitting a royal palace. the king had kept the promise made to his darling son, count alexander von der mark, in charlottenburg. the affectionate father had given his handsome son the longed-for palace under the linden-trees; and the young count, together with his mother and sister, had taken up his abode in this palace. but the little count von der mark had not long enjoyed the pleasure of standing with his beautiful mother at the windows of his residence, to look at the parades which the king caused to be held there on his account. on such occasions the king had always taken up his position immediately beneath the windows of his son's palace, in order that they might obtain a better view of the troops. the little count had worn his title and occupied his palace but one year, when he died.[52] the king's grief had been profound and lasting, and never had the image of his handsome boy grown dim in the heart of his royal father. the loss of his son had driven frederick william to the verge of despair, and wilhelmine had been compelled to dry her own tears and suppress her own sorrow in order to console the king. wilhelmine rietz had manifested so much love and tenderness for the king during this trying period, and had practised so much self-denial, that the king's love and admiration for his "dear friend" had been greatly increased. "you are a noble woman, and a heroine," said he. "any other woman would weep and lament--_you_ are silent, and your lips wear a smile, although i well know what pain this smile must cost your tender mother's heart. any other woman would tremble and look with care and anxiety into the future, because the death of the son might be prejudicial to her own position; she would have hastened to obtain from me an assurance that she should not suffer in consequence of this loss. you have done nothing of all this; you have wept and sorrowed with me; you have cheered and consoled me, and have not once asked, who was to be the heir of my little alexander, and what souvenir he had left you." wilhelmine rietz shook her head, and smiled sadly, well knowing how becoming this smile was to her pale countenance. "i need no souvenir of my son," said she; "his memory will ever live in my heart. i have not asked who alexander's heir was to be, because i have never supposed that he could have left an inheritance, for all that i and my children have belongs to the king, and is his property, as we ourselves are. i have not trembled for my own security, because i confide in my king and master as in my god, and i feel assured that he will ever observe his solemn oath and will never abandon me." "no, never, wilhelmine," cried the king. "you are a noble woman! you are, and will ever remain, my dear, adored friend, and my love for you will be more enduring than my love for any other woman. lay aside all care and fear, wilhelmine, and confide in me. all the efforts and intrigues of your friends to injure you shall be unavailing. all else will pass away, but my love for you will endure until death; and no woman, though i love her passionately, will be able to banish you from my side!" "will you swear this, frederick william! will you lay your finger on this scar on my hand and swear that my enemies shall never succeed in banishing me from your side, and that you will ever accord me a place in your heart?" the king laid his hand on this scar, and it recalled to his memory the hour in which wilhelmine had intentionally given her hand a wound in order that he might record his vow of love and fidelity in her own blood. "i lay my hand on this scar," said he, "and swear by the memory of my dear son, alexander, that i will never neglect or forget his mother, but will love, honor, and cherish her until the end. and here is a proof that i _have_ not forgotten you," cried the king, as he threw his arms around her neck, kissed her cheek, and handed her a deed of the palace under the linden-trees, and of all else that had belonged to count alexander von der mark. wilhelmine rietz and her daughter continued to reside in the palace under the linden-trees. her house was one of the most popular resorts in berlin, and the most select and intelligent society was to be found in her parlors. to be sure the rustle of an aristocratic lady's silk robe was never heard on the waxed floors of this stately mansion, but wilhelmine's social gatherings were, perhaps, none the less animated and agreeable on that account. her guests were charmed with her vivacity, brilliant wit, and fine satire, and the most eminent scholars, artists, and poets, esteemed it a great honor to be permitted to frequent wilhelmine rietz's parlors. she loved art and science, was herself somewhat of a poetess, and possessed above all else a mind capable of quickly comprehending what she saw and heard, and of profiting by intercourse with scholars and artists. it was a favorite plea with the gentlemen who visited her house, that wilhelmine rietz was the protectress of art and science, and, moreover, a very intelligent lady, of whom they were in justice compelled to say that she possessed fine sense, much knowledge, and very agreeable manners. the king himself, an intellectual man, and a patron of art and science, often took part in madame rietz's social gatherings. in her parlors he was sure to find the relaxation and enjoyment which he sought in vain in the society of his beautiful and aristocratic wife of the left hand. the beautiful julie von voss, entitled countess ingenheim, had never forgiven herself for having at last yielded to the wishes of her family, to the entreaties of her royal lover, and to the weakness of her own heart, by consenting to become the king's wife of the left hand, although a wife of the right hand still lived. her reason and her pride told her that this little mantle of propriety was not large enough to hide her humiliation. her soul was filled with grief and remorse; she felt that her glittering, apparently so happy existence, was nothing more than a gilded lie--nothing more than shame, garnished over with titles and honors. the king often found his beautiful, once so ardently loved julie in tears; she was never gay, and she never laughed. indeed she often went so far as to reproach herself and her royal lover. but tears and reproaches were ingredients of conversation which were by no means pleasing to frederick william, and he fled from them to the parlors of his dear friend, wilhelmine, where he was certain to find gayety and amusement. wilhelmine rietz thought of all this while reclining on her sofa, awaiting the arrival of invited company--she thought of this while gazing at the reflection of herself (adorned with jewelry and attired in a satin dress, embroidered with silver), in the magnificent venetian mirror. she had always found these conversations with her image in a mirror very interesting, for these two ladies kept no secrets from each other, but were friends, who imparted their inmost thoughts without prudery and hypocrisy. "you will yet be a countess," said wilhelmine. "yes, a countess, and whatever else you may desire." the lady in the mirror smiled, and replied: "yes, a countess, or even a princess, but certainly not one who heaps reproaches upon herself, and dies of remorse; nor yet one of those who seek to reconcile themselves to the world, and to purchase an abode in heaven, by unceasing prayer and costly alms-giving. no, i will be a countess who enjoys life and compels her enemies to bend the knee--who seeks to reconcile herself to the world by giving brilliant entertainments and good dinners, and cares but little for what may take place after her death--a countess who exclaims with her great model, the marquise de pompadour, '_après moi, le déluge!_'" chapter ix. husband and wife. wilhelmine was now interrupted in her animated conversation with her reflection by the abrupt entrance of her "self-styled husband," the chamberlain rietz. she saw him in the mirror, and she saw, too, how the friend with whom she had been conversing, colored with displeasure and frowned. without rising, or even turning her head, she allowed the chamberlain to approach until he stood in front of her, and then she cried, in an imperious voice: "where were my servants? why do you come unannounced to my presence?" rietz, the king's chamberlain and factotum, laughed loudly. "for fear of being turned away, ma belle, and because i considered it more appropriate to come unannounced to my wife's presence. once for all, my dearest, spare me this nonsense, and do not embitter our lives unnecessarily! let your courtiers, your dukes, princes, counts, and professors, wait in the antechamber, and come announced, if you will, but you must receive me as you receive the king, that is, unannounced. on the other hand, i promise you, never to make use of this privilege when you are entertaining company, or are engaged in some agreeable little _tête-à-tête_. are you satisfied? is this agreed upon?" "it shall be as you say," said wilhelmine, pointing to a stool that stood near the sofa. "seat yourself and let me know why you honor me with your presence." but rietz, instead of seating himself on the stool, proceeded with the greatest composure to roll forward a splendid arm-chair, on the back of which a royal coronet was emblazoned. "i suppose i am entitled to use this chair when the king is not present," said he, seating himself; "moreover, i like to sit comfortably. now, i am installed, and the conference between the two crowned heads can begin. do you know, or have you the slightest conception of, what the subject of this conference will be?" "no," replied wilhelmine, placing her little foot with its gold-embroidered satin slipper on the stool, and regarding it complacently, "no, not the slightest, but i beg you to tell me quickly, as i am expecting company." "ah, expecting company! then i will begin our conference, carissima, by telling you to order your servant to inform your visitors that you have been suddenly taken ill and beg to be excused." "before giving this command i must first request you to give me your reasons." "my reasons? well, i will give you one reason instead of many. it might not be agreeable to your guests to have the glass from the window-panes and the stones which have shattered them flying about their heads in your parlor." "my friend," said wilhelmine, still regarding the tips of her feet, "if you feel an irresistible inclination to jest, you will find an appreciative audience among the lackeys in my antechamber." "thank you, i prefer to converse seriously with my wife in the parlor. but if you desire it i will ring for one of these impudent rascals, and order him, in your name, to admit no visitors. moreover, it would be well to have the inner shutters of all the windows of your palace closed. the latter must, of course, be sacrificed, but the shutters will, at least, prevent the stones from entering your apartments and doing any further damage. are your windows provided with shutters?" "i see you are determined to continue this farce," said wilhelmine, shrugging her shoulders. "without doubt you have wagered with some one that you could alarm me, and the closing of the shutters is to be the evidence that you have won the wager. such is the case, is it not?" "no, carissima, such is not the case, and i beg you to play the rôle of the undaunted heroine no longer; it becomes you very well, but you cannot excite my admiration and--" "nor have i any such intention," said she, leaning back on the sofa, and stretching herself like a tigress that appears to be quite exhausted, but is, nevertheless, ever ready to spring upon the enemy. "enough of this, my friend!" cried the chamberlain, impatiently. "listen! if you consider it a bagatelle to have your palace demolished, and yourself accused of being a poisoner, it is, of course, all the same to me, and i have nothing more to say, except that i was a fool to consider it my duty to warn you, because we had formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, and because i could not look on calmly while your enemies were plotting your destruction." the tigress had bounded from her lair, her eyes glowing with great excitement. "you are in earnest, rietz? this is not one of your jokes? my enemies are plotting my destruction! they are about to attack me! speak, be quick! what was it you said about poisoning? do they accuse me of being a poisoner?" "certainly they do, and i am glad that this magical word has recalled my sleeping beauty to life. yes, your enemies accuse you of being a poisoner. it is truly fortunate that i have spies in every quarter, who bring me early intelligence of these little matters." "and whom have i poisoned?" "countess ingenheim, of course. whom should you have poisoned but your rival?" "my rival!" repeated wilhelmine, with a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders. "countess ingenheim was ill. is she worse?" "countess ingenheim is dying!" "dying!" echoed wilhelmine, and a ray of joy gleamed in the eyes of the tigress, but she quickly repressed it. "this is, of course, an exaggeration of the physicians, who will afterward attribute to themselves the merit of having effected her recovery from so hopeless a condition. i have heard of instances of this kind before. four days ago the countess was comparatively well; i met her in the king's little box at the theatre, on which occasion her affability and condescension were truly surprising." "yes, and it is alleged by your enemies that you committed the crime on that very occasion. the countess complained of heat and thirst, did she not?" "yes, she did, and when she sank back in her chair, almost insensible, the king begged me to assist her." "to which you replied that a composing powder was what she required, and that you, fortunately, always carried a box of these powders in your pocket. hereupon you opened the door, and ordered one of the lackeys who stood in the entry to bring you a glass of water and some sugar. when he brought it, you took a small box from your pocket, and emptied a little paper of white powder into the water; when this foamed up, you handed the glass to the countess, who immediately drank its contents. am i accurate?" "you are, and i admire this accuracy all the more, because no one was present in the box but us three." "you forget the lackey who brought the water, and saw you pour the powder into the glass. this morning the countess was suddenly attacked with a violent hemorrhage; whereupon the lackey immediately told her brother, minister von voss, the whole story. her high connections and the entire court have been aroused, and if the countess should die to-day, as her physicians say she will, a storm will arise out of this glass of water, with the aid of which your enemies hope to hurl you from your eminence and consign you to prison." "foolish people!" said wilhelmine, contemptuously. "the king will not only discredit their revelations, but will also hold them to a strict account for their slander. let this be my care." "my dearest, before proceeding to punish these slanderers, i would advise you to consider your own safety a little. i tell you this matter is graver than you suppose, my proud, undaunted lady. the whole pack is let loose, and bischofswerder and wöllner are lashing the conspirators on, and heaping fuel on the flames. they immediately convoked a meeting of the holy brotherhood, and issued a secret order. this order i have seen. you must know that i was received into this holy band some two weeks since, as serving brother of the outer temple halls. what do you think of the title, 'serving brother of the outer temple halls?'" and the chamberlain burst into so loud and mocking a peal of laughter, that his colossal stature fairly trembled. "suppress your merriment for a moment, if you please, and tell me how this secret order of the rosicrucians reads." the chamberlain's countenance quickly assumed an air of gravity. "the order is as follows: 'all the brothers serving in the outer temple halls will repair, at ten o'clock this evening, to your palace, for the purpose of engaging in the charming recreation of battering your windows with the stones that lie piled up in great plenty in this vicinity, in places where the pavement is being renewed; while so occupied, they are to cry--'murderess! poisoner! curses upon her! down with this murderess!' a charming chorus, my angel of innocence!" "yes, a chorus over which the angels in heaven will rejoice, even if they should not be such angels of innocence as i am in this affair. i thank you for this communication; it is really of great importance." "i must, however, beg you, my dear madame, to take this fact into consideration. by making this communication, i not only imperil my salvation, but am probably already wholly lost, and have certainly forfeited all prospects of ever entering the sanctuary of the temple, and becoming an invisible brother. each brother is required, on his admission, to register a fearful oath, to the effect that he will never, although his own life or that of his parents or children should be at stake, betray the secrets of the holy fathers; and i, frail mortal, have betrayed the confidence of my superiors! alas, alas! i am a lost soul! the invisible fathers will expel me from the brotherhood if they should ever hear of this." "give yourself no disquiet, i will never betray you," said wilhelmine, laughing. "i am only surprised that you should ever have been admitted into the brotherhood, and that such an order should have been issued in your presence." "my fairest, they are not aware that the mr. müller of oranienburg, who was received into the holy order by the general assembly some two weeks since, is no other than the veritable chamberlain rietz. you must know that it is impossible to recognize each other in these assemblies, as they are held in a mystical gloom, and that the brothers are known to each other when they meet in the world by certain words, signs, and pressures of the hand, only. my dear, twenty of these rosicrucians might meet at a party, without dreaming that they were so closely connected. the names of all the brothers are known only to the circle directors, and i was of course not such a fool as to write my real name on the slip of paper which i deposited in the urn after having paid the admission-fee of four fredericks d'or, and received in return the holy symbol of initiation in the solemn twilight of the outer temple halls. the exalted fathers, bischofswerder and wöllner, would be astonished, and any thing but delighted, to learn that i was present at the meeting of to-day, and was one of the favored individuals who heard the order given concerning the demolition of your palace." "by all that i hold dear, these traitors shall pay dearly for this malice!" exclaimed wilhelmine, frowning angrily. "this conflict must be brought to a conclusion. i am weary of this necessity of being constantly on the alert to guard against the stratagems and attacks of my enemies. i will have peace, and either _they_ or _i_ must be conquered." "if i might be permitted to give the goddess minerva my advice, i would say: 'make peace with _these_ enemies, and secure the support and assistance of the dear rosicrucians against your other enemies, the aristocrats and court conspirators.' believe me, i give you this advice in all honesty and sincerity, and why should i not? are we not allies, and have we not sworn to assist each other at all times and everywhere? in _this_ respect my charming wife has been a most excellent companion; she has kept her promises faithfully. thanks to her assistance, i have attained all i desired, and there are few men who can say this of themselves. i desired influence, power, and money, and i have them all. by the king's favor i have achieved influence and power, and have amassed wealth by the folly of the persons sent me by you, my dearest, with their petitions for patents of nobility and decorations. in the three years of our reign i have created at least two hundred noblemen, and of this number twenty counts in the first year alone." "yes, indeed, these counts are well known," said wilhelmine, laughing; "the gentlemen of the old nobility call them by no other name than 'the batch of 1786.'"[53] "moreover, the number of crosses of st. john, and orders of the eagle, conferred by me upon deserving individuals, is legion, and goodly sums of money have they brought into my coffers!" said rietz, laughing. "i desired a well-provided table, at which i could entertain a few gentlemen of rank and convivial spirits; and now gentlemen of this stamp are only too anxious to obtain invitations to my dinners, and to enjoy the delicious pasties for which my french cook is so justly celebrated. i lead a life of enjoyment, and, as i am in a great measure indebted to your recommendation and patronage for this enjoyment, it is but natural that i should be grateful, and should endeavor to serve you to the best of my ability." "i thank you, _cher ami_," said wilhelmine, in kindly tones. "you, too, have always been a good and efficient friend, and it was partly through _your_ influence that my debts were paid, my income doubled, and myself made the mistress of this beautiful palace. i still desire a great many things, however. yon are aware that i am so unfortunate as to be ambitious, and--" "and, in your ear, the name madame rietz is not exactly the music of the spheres." "not exactly, my dear friend, although i must admit that the name is rather musical. but i--" the door of the antechamber was hastily opened, and a lackey appeared on the threshold, holding in his hand a silver waiter on which a folded note lay. "this note has just been left here for chamberlain rietz," said the lackey. rietz took the note and opened it. "madame," said he, after the door had closed behind the servant, "madame, my worst fears are realized. countess ingenheim is dead!" "dead!" repeated wilhelmine, shuddering. "poor woman, she has paid dearly for her short-lived triumph, and those who assert that the poor person was poisoned, are probably right; the shame attendant upon her position, her pangs of conscience and her remorse--these were the drops of poison which she daily imbibed, and of which she has now died. truly, to be the beloved of a king requires a firm heart and very strong nerves. poor woman, i pity her!" "truly, you are worthy of the greatest admiration," said rietz. "you lament the sad fate of your rival, while you yourself are in the greatest danger on her account. you must now decide whether you will receive your company or not." "oh, my friend," sighed wilhelmine, "how can you suppose me capable of indulging in the delights of social intercourse at a time when i have suffered so sad a loss? no, the king's grief is my grief also, and instead of being merry and laughing with others, i will weep with the royal widower." "you are an incomparable woman," cried rietz, with a loud peal of laughter; "as wise, as beautiful, as much the demon as the angel! no wonder you are fearless! your power rests on an adamantine foundation." wilhelmine made no response, but rang the bell, and told the servant who answered her call, to inform the porter that no soirée would take place that evening, and that he was to tell all visitors that mourning for the sudden death of countess ingenheim would compel her to forego the pleasure of seeing them for that evening and the following week. "i beg you to leave me now, my friend," said wilhelmine, beginning to divest herself of the sparkling jewels that encircled her neck and arms. "i must hasten to lay aside these worldly garments, in order that the king may find me attired in sable robes when he arrives." "how! do you believe the king will visit you at a time when his wife of the left hand has but just breathed her last?" "i feel assured that he will. his majesty knows how deep an interest i take in all that concerns him. he knows where to look for sympathy; he knows that i laugh with him when he is glad, and weep with him when he is sad. to whom should he flee in his hour of grief but to me?" "you are right," said rietz, smiling, "to whom should he flee, in his hour of grief, but to his first sultana? i am going, and i truly promise you that if his majesty, in the depth of his grief, should chance to be forgetful of this haven of rest, i will suggest it to our dear, chastened king." "do so, my friend, and hasten to his majesty's side, or my enemies will forestall you, and perhaps console the king in a different manner." "i am going, sultana. but these shutters--shall i order them to be closed?" "and why, pray? i am not afraid of a few stones, and if they should be showered upon us too plentifully, we can retire to one of the back rooms and observe the bombardment in perfect security. when did you say it was to begin?" "as soon as it has grown dark; the deeds of these pious fathers shun the light of day. the calendar says moonlight until ten o'clock; it is therefore probable that the sovereign people, as the rabble of paris now calls itself, will not honor you with a call until that hour. it would be well to notify the police of the flattering attentions awaiting you, and to solicit a guard for the protection of your palace." "i will take good care not to do so," rejoined wilhelmine, smiling. "let the sovereign people amuse themselves by breaking my windows if they choose. the louder they howl and call me poisoner the better, for the king will hear them and he will pity me." "wilhelmine," cried rietz with enthusiasm, "it is a pity you are already my wife; if you were not i should certainly address you. i could love you to distraction!" "do not, my friend, i pray you," said wilhelmine; "you would cut but a sorry figure in the rôle of a disconsolate lover. but now go; it is already eight o'clock, and i hear a great many carriages coming and going." the chamberlain pressed her beautiful hand to his lips, and then took his departure. she regarded him with a contemptuous smile as he left the room, and when the door had closed behind him, a clear and ringing peal of laughter escaped her lips. "to think that this caliban has the honor of being called my husband," said she, "and that i am still the wife of a valet! and why? merely because i am not of noble birth, like--like these sensitive puppets, whose shame is garnished over with noble titles and robes of ermine, and who nevertheless succumb and die under the burden of their self-acquired dignities. i can bear the precious burden! i--will not die! no, not i!" chapter x. the attack. half an hour later the folding-doors of the reception-room were thrown open to admit the king, who came without ceremony, and without attendants, as he was in the habit of doing. wilhelmine hurried forward to meet him; her lovely countenance wore a sad expression, and her beautiful figure was attired in sable mourning-robes. one might have supposed she had lost her mother or a sister, so mournful was her manner, so full of sadness was her glance as she slowly raised her eyes to the king's pale countenance. "my dear master," murmured she, "how kind your majesty is, to think of me, and honor me with a visit, in this your hour of sore trial!" he stroked her soft, shining hair tenderly, and drew her head to his bosom. "i never forget you, my friend, and the thought of your radiant eyes and lovely countenance always consoles me when i am troubled with care or grief, which is unfortunately very often the case." "your majesty's grief has been so great to-day! the divine being whom we all loved and honored has gone from us!" "yes," said the king, with a deep-drawn sigh, his expression more indicative of ennui than of sorrow, "yes, countess ingenheim died this afternoon. but her death did not surprise me; the good countess had been in very bad health ever since the birth of her son, more than a year ago, and my physician had long since told me that she had the consumption, and would not live through the autumn. the poor countess had been very tearful of late; she wept a great deal when i was with her, and was constantly reproaching herself. this was unpleasant, and i visited her but rarely during the last few weeks for fear of agitating the poor invalid. moreover, she kept up a pretence of being well," continued the king, seating himself in the arm-chair, in which rietz had been so comfortably installed a few minutes before. "yes, she wished to impose on the world with this pretence, as if it were possible to avoid observing the traces of her terrible disease in her pale, attenuated countenance! she always held herself erect, went to all the parties, and even visited the theatre, four days ago. you remember it, doubtlessly, as you were present?" "yes, i remember," murmured wilhelmine, as she seated herself on a stool at the king's feet, folded the hands, that contrasted like white lilies with her flowing black-lace sleeves, on his knees, and gave him a tender, languishing glance. she knew how effective these glances were--she knew that she could always bind her lover to herself again with these invisible toils. "if poor julie had but had your eyes and your health!" sighed the king. "but she was always ailing, and in the end nothing becomes more disagreeable than a sickly woman. but let us speak of this no longer, it makes me sad! it is well that my poor julie has, at last, found a refuge in the grave from her unceasing remorse and her jealous love." and thus frederick took leave of the spirit of the affectionate woman who had sacrificed all through her love for him. the consciousness that his love for her had long since died, and that she was nothing more than a burden to him, had killed her. having taken leave of the spirit of his dead love, the king now assumed a cheerful expression, and this expression was immediately reflected in wilhelmine's countenance. she smiled, arose from her stool, threw her soft, white arms around the king's neck with passionate tenderness, and exclaimed: "how is it possible to die when one can have the happiness of living at your side!" the king drew her to his heart and kissed her. "_you_ will live, wilhelmine! you love me too dearly to think of dying of this miserable feeling of remorse. you have been tried and found true, wilhelmine, and nothing can hereafter separate us." "nothing, my dear king and master!" "nothing, wilhelmine; not even a new love. the flames of tenderness that glow in my heart may sometimes flare up and seem to point in other directions, but they will ever return to you, and never will the altar grow cold on which the first love-flames burned so brightly in the fair days of our youth." "god bless your majesty for these words!" cried wilhelmine, pressing the king's hands to her lips. "let us have no more of this formality, i pray you," said frederick william, wearily. "we are alone, and i am heartily tired of carrying the royal purple about with me wherever i go. relieve me of this burdensome mantle, wilhelmine, and let us dream that the days of our youthful happiness have come back to us." "my frederick is always young," whispered she; "eternal youth glows in your heart and is reflected on your noble brow. but i--look at me, frederick william! i have grown old, and the unmerciful hand of time has been laid ungently on my brow." the king looked at wilhelmine, and could find no evidence of this in the fresh, smiling countenance of his enchantress. he listened to her siren voice, and its music soothed his soul and dissipated all care and sorrow. as the hand of the clock neared the tenth hour, and while wilhelmine was engaged in a charming _tête-à-tête_ with the king over a delightful supper of savory dishes and choice wines, the smiling siren told him of the danger that threatened her, of the new intrigue of her enemies at court, and of their determination to incite a mob to attack her palace. "there can be nothing in all this," said the king, smiling; "this story has only been concocted to alarm you. if your enemies had formed any such plan, my superintendent of police would certainly have heard of it, and have taken measures to prevent it." wilhelmine inclined her rosy lips to the king's ear, and narrated in low accents what rietz had told her concerning the order issued by the rosicrucians. the king started with surprise and alarm. "no," said he, "this is impossible; bischofswerder and wöllner are my most faithful friends; they will never undertake to harm you, for they know that you are dear to me, and that your presence is necessary to my peace and contentment--yes, i may even say to my happiness!" "it is for this very reason that they desire to effect my banishment. they hope to gain unbounded control over you, by driving from your side the only being who dares to tell you the truth, and who loves in you the dear, noble man, and not the king! my disinterested love for you, frederick william, is in their eyes a crime, and they accuse me of having committed another crime, for the purpose of tearing me from your heart and treading me under foot like a noxious weed!" "they shall not succeed!" protested frederick william. "but i cannot believe that--" the king ceased speaking; at this moment a deafening roar, as of the sea when lashed to fury by the storm, was heard in the street; it came nearer and nearer, and then the windows of the palace shook with the fierce cries: "murderess! poisoner! curses upon the murderess!" wilhelmine, an air of perfect serenity on her countenance, remained seated at the king's feet, but he turned pale and looked toward the window in dismay. "you perceive, my master," said she, with an air of perfect indifference, "you perceive that these are the exact words agreed upon in the rosicrucian assembly this morning. this is the war-cry of my enemies." "murderess! poisoner!" resounded again upon the night air. "curses upon the murderess!" "i knew they would dare to make this attack," murmured wilhelmine, still smiling. "had i felt guilty, i would have fled or have solicited protection of my king. but i wished your majesty to see how far my enemies would go in their malignity--what cruel measures they would take to effect my banishment." "you have done well," said the king, earnestly; "you have acted like a heroine, and never--" he was interrupted by a loud crash, and something hissed through the broken window. with a loud, piercing cry, wilhelmine threw herself over the king's person and clasped him in a close embrace, as if determined to protect him against the whole world. "they may murder me, but they shall not harm a hair of your dear head, my beloved!" these words, uttered in loud, exulting tones, sounded in the king's ear like an inspiring hymn of love, and he never forgot them. the stone had fallen to the floor, with a loud noise, but no second one followed it. curses still resounded from below, but the mob seemed nevertheless to have been alarmed by their own boldness, and hesitated before commencing a new attack. wilhelmine now released the king from her protecting embrace, and with gentle force compelled him to rise from his chair. "come, my beloved, danger threatens you here! they will soon make another attack." "wilhelmine," said he, with emotion, "give me that stone." as she stooped to pick up the stone that lay at her feet, the black lace shawl fell to the floor, disclosing a purple stripe on her snow-white shoulder. "you are wounded, wilhelmine, you are wounded!" cried the king, in dismay. she had arisen in the mean while, and now handed him the stone, with her siren smile. "it is nothing, my king; the dear people's cannon-ball merely grazed my shoulder. to be sure, it hurts a little, but my arms are not broken." "and it was for me that you received this wound!" said the king, in deep emotion. "you shielded and protected me with your fair form. wilhelmine, i will never forget this; this stone shall be a lasting memorial of your love and heroic devotion!" for the second time a loud crash was heard, and now the stones came flying through the broken windows in quick succession. at this moment several lackeys, pale with fright, rushed into the room to report that the populace were endeavoring to batter down the doors of the palace, and that these were already giving way. "save yourself, my king, flee from this palace!" cried wilhelmine. "permit my butler to lead you through the garden to the little gate that opens into behren street; from there your majesty will be able to return to your palace in safety." "and you, my dearest?" asked the king. "and i," said she, with heroic composure, "i will await my enemies; if they kill me i can die with the proud consciousness that i have saved the life of my king, and that he, at least, is convinced of my innocence!" another shower of stones succeeded, and the parlor was now a scene of fearful confusion. while fierce curses upon the head of the murderess, and denunciations of the poisoner, resounded from the street below, chairs, mirrors, vases, and marble tables, were being broken and scattered in every direction by the stones that poured in through the windows in an uninterrupted shower. in the midst of this din and clatter wilhelmine's voice could be heard from time to time, conjuring the king to fly, or at least to repair with her to one of the apartments in the rear of the palace. but the king remained firm; and issued his commands to the trembling servants, in a loud voice. he ordered them to close the inner shutters, and they did as he bade them. creeping timidly on their hands and knees to the windows, they withdrew the bolts and closed the shutters with a sudden jerk. the king now ordered one of the lackeys to hasten through the garden to the office of his superintendent of police, to acquaint him with the state of affairs, and to request him to disperse the insurrectionary populace. after this messenger had been despatched, and now that the stones were falling harmlessly from the closed shutters, the king dismissed the servants who were present. he was now once more alone with the beloved of his youth. "wilhelmine," said he, "i can never forget your heroism and devotion. you shall have complete satisfaction for the insults offered you to-day, and those who sought your destruction shall bend the knee before you." half an hour later all was still, and the stones were no longer flying against the windows. the chief of police had made a requisition on the military authorities for a body of troops, and the populace had fled in terror from the threatening muskets and glittering sabres. the king had taken his departure in the carriage that had been ordered to await him in behren street. he had, however, taken the stone with him that had struck wilhelmine's shoulder. on taking leave he kissed her tenderly, and told her to await him in her palace at twelve o'clock on the following day, when she should receive the promised satisfaction. wilhelmine was now alone; with a proud, triumphant smile, she walked to and fro in the parlor, seeming to enjoy the scene of confusion and destruction. at times, when her foot touched one of the stones, she would laugh, push it aside, and exclaim: "thus you shall all be thrust aside, my enemies! i will walk over you all, and the stones which you have hurled at me shall serve as a stairway for my ascent!--i have managed well," said she, continuing to walk restlessly to and fro. "i have opened the king's eyes to the malignity and cunning of his friends, and have shown my enemies that i am not afraid of, and scorn to fly from them. messrs. von bischofswerder and wöllner will soon come to the conclusion that they will be worsted in this conflict, and had better seek to form an alliance with their formidable enemy!" as she continued walking amid the surrounding stones and ruins, the blood trickled slowly down her shoulder; and this, with her glittering eyes, gave her once more the appearance of a tigress--of a wounded tigress meditating revenge. wilhelmine was now interrupted in her train of thought by a noise in the street that sounded like the distant roll of thunder. she opened one of the shutters, behind which nothing remained of the window but the frame, and looked out into the night, and down into the broad street of the linden-trees, now entirely deserted. but the noise grew louder and louder, and the street seemed to be faintly illumined in the distance. this light soon became a broad glare; and then wilhelmine saw that it was a funeral procession. she saw a number of dark, shrouded figures bearing gleaming torches, and then a long funeral car, drawn by four black horses. a coffin lay on this car. its silver ornaments shone brightly in the reflection of the torches; a coronet at the head of the coffin glittered as though bathed in the dawning light of a new day. torch-bearers followed the funeral car, and then came a number of closed carriages. it was the funeral procession of countess julie von ingenheim, conveying the corpse to the estate of the family von voss, to deposit it in the ancestral vaults. wilhelmine stood at the window and saw this ghostly procession glide by in the stillness of the night. she remained there until it had disappeared in the distance, and all was again silent. when she stepped back her countenance was radiant with a proud, triumphant smile. "she is dead!" said she, in low tones; "the coronet now glitters on her coffin _only_. i still live, and a coronet will yet glitter on my brow. a long time may elapse before i attain this coveted gem; but this wound on my shoulder may work wonders. i can afford to wait, for i--i do not intend to die. i will outlive you all--you who dare contend with me for the king's heart. our love is sealed with blood, but the vows which he made to you were cast upon the wind!" on the following day, the king repaired to madame rietz's palace at the appointed hour. he came with a brilliant suite; all his ministers and courtiers, and even his son, the prince royal frederick william, accompanied him. the young prince had come in obedience to his father's command, but a dark frown rested on his countenance as he walked through the glittering apartments. when he met the mistress of all this magnificence, and when the king himself introduced her to his son as his dear friend, a glance of contemptuous anger shot from the usually mild eyes of the prince royal upon the countenance of the smiling friend. she felt the meaning of this glance; it pierced her heart like a dagger; and a voice seemed to whisper in her ear: "this youth will destroy you! beware of him, for he is the avenging angel destined to punish you!" but she suppressed her terror, smiled, and listened to the king, who was narrating the occurrences of the riot of the day before, and pointing to the stones which, at the king's express command, had been allowed to remain where they had fallen. "it was an insurrection," said the king--"an insurrection of the populace, that now fancies itself sovereign, and would so gladly play the master and ruler, and dictate terms to its king. i hate this rabble and all those who make it subservient to their ends--who use its rude fists to execute their own plans--and never will i pardon or take into favor such rebels and traitors." as the king concluded, he fastened an angry glance on bischofswerder and wöllner, the covert meaning of which these worthies seemed to have divined, for they cast their eyes down and looked abashed. the king now turned to wilhelmine, raised the lace shawl from her shoulder with a gentle hand, and pointed to the wound which she had received the day before. "look at this, gentlemen! madame rietz received this wound while interposing her own body to protect her king; the stone that inflicted this wound would, but for her devotion and heroism, have struck me in the face. my son, you see before you the protectress of your father; kiss her hand and thank her! and you, too, gentlemen, all of you, thank the heroic woman who shielded your king from danger." this was indeed a glorious satisfaction! wilhelmine's ambitious heart exulted with joy as she stood there like a queen, her hand extended to be kissed by a prince royal, by generals, ministers, and courtiers, whose words of thanks were unceasingly resounding in her ear. but there was one drop of bitterness in all this honey; and the warning voice again whispered, "beware of the prince royal, for he is the avenging angel destined to punish you!" the prince royal had given her a second threatening glance when he stooped to kiss her hand, at the king's command; and she alone knew that his lips had not touched her hand. the king had looked on with a smile while his ministers and courtiers were doing homage to his "protectress." he now turned to the portrait of his favorite son, count von der mark. his boy's soft, mild eyes seemed to gaze down on his father. "my son," said the king, in a loud, agitated voice, "i swear to your blessed spirit, surely in our midst in this hour, i swear that i will reward the mother you so tenderly loved, for all the affection which she lavished upon my boy, and that i will never forget her devotion in risking her own life to preserve mine. my son, i swear to you that i will be grateful to the preserver of my life while i live, and that her enemies shall never succeed in lowering her in my high estimation. my son, in witness of this my solemn vow, i kiss the wound which your noble mother received in my defence!" frederick william stooped and kissed the wound on wilhelmine's shoulder. it was a grand, an impressive moment, and wilhelmine's ambitious heart exulted. visions of a brilliant future arose before her soul, and, as she stooped to kiss the king's hand, she vowed that these visions should be realized! but, when she raised her head, she shuddered. she had again encountered the prince royal's glance. the dagger pierced her heart for the third time, and the warning voice in her soul whispered for the third time: "beware of the prince royal! he is the avenging angel destined to punish you!" chapter xi. youth victorious. charlotte von stein sat in her garden pavilion, anxiously awaiting him for whom it had never been necessary to wait in former days. she had already given him three invitations to pay her a morning visit in the little pavilion in which his protestations of love had so often resounded. but these tender invitations had not been accepted. he had always found some pretext for avoiding this _tête-à-tête_ in charlotte's pavilion; he was too busy, had commenced some work which he desired to finish without interruption, or was troubled with toothache. but charlotte would not understand that he made these excuses in order to give the dark cloud that hung over them both time to pass away. with the obstinate boldness so often characteristic of intelligent women who have been much courted, and which prompts them rather to cut the gordian knot with the sword than to unravel it slowly with their skilful fingers, charlotte von stein had for the fourth time entreated him to grant the desired interview, and goethe at last consented. charlotte was now awaiting him; she gazed intently at the doorway, and her heart beat wildly. but she determined to be composed, to meet him in a mild and gentle manner. she knew that goethe detested any exhibition of anger or violence in women. she was also well aware that he was very restive under reproach. charlotte knew this, and was determined to give him no cause for displeasure. she desired to see this monarch bound in her silken toils once more; she desired to see the vanquished hero walk before her triumphal car as in the past. "i cannot break with him," said she, "for i feel that i still love him; moreover, it would be very disagreeable to be spoken of by posterity as the discarded sweetheart of the celebrated poet! no, no! i will be reconciled to him, and all shall be as it was before! all! and now be quiet, my heart, be quiet!" she took a book from the table before which she was sitting, regardless of what it might be; her object was to collect her thoughts, and compel her mind to be quiet. she opened the book, and looked at it with an air of indifference. it was a volume of voltaire's works, which goethe had sent the day before, when she had written him a note requesting him to let her have something to read. she remembered this now, and also remembered that she had as yet read nothing in the volume. perhaps she would still have time to make good this omission; goethe might ask her about the book. she read listlessly, in various parts of the work; suddenly this passage attracted her attention: "qui n'a pas l'esprit de son âge de son âge n'a que la malheur!"[54] strange words these! she felt as if a chilly hand had been laid on her warm, quivering heart. was the spirit of her age wanting in her? was nothing but its unhappiness portrayed in her faded countenance? with an angry movement she threw the book aside, arose from her seat, and went to her mirror. "am i really old? is the unhappiness of old age really depicted in my countenance, while the spirit of youth and love is at the same time burning in my heart?" she anxiously scanned her features in search of the handwriting of this inexorable enemy of women, who stalks pitilessly behind their youth and beauty, is their invisible companion on all the rosy paths of life, and who, when he at last becomes visible, drives away all those who had loved, adored, and done homage to their beauty. charlotte sighed; she recognized this handwriting; the enemy was becoming but too plainly visible! she sighed again. "yes, it is written there that i am forty-six years old, and every one can read it! he, too--alas! he, too!" but after a short pause her countenance grew brighter. "charlotte, you should be ashamed of yourself--you insult your friend and lover! he loves you for your beauty of heart and mind, and not for your outward beauty. it was your mind that attracted him, your heart that enchained him, and they have not undergone any change, have not grown older. he loves you for the eternal youth that glows in your heart and mind, and he cares not for the mask with which age has covered your countenance! yes, thus it is, and thus it always will be, for goethe is not like other men; he cares not for outward appearances, he looks at the inmost being. this it is that he loves, and ever will love in me, for this is and ever will be unchanged! be joyous, charlotte, be happy! do not dread the unhappiness of old age. voltaire was wrong, and i will take the liberty of correcting voltaire. his sentence should read: "qui n'a pas l'esprit de la jeunesse n'aura que le malheur de la vieillesse." "yes, thus it should read: 'who does not bear the spirit of youth within himself, to him old age brings nothing but unhappiness!'" as her dear friend soon afterward entered the pavilion, charlotte advanced to meet him with the reflection of enduring youth resting on her brow, and a glad smile on her lips. but he did not observe it, his countenance was grave and earnest. he came with the conviction that the thunder storm that had been long gathering overhead would now burst upon them in all its fury. he had come armed for the fray with this outward sternness of manner, while his soul was filled with grief and tenderness. "goethe," she murmured, extending both hands to greet him, "goethe, i thank you for having come." "charlotte," said he, gently, "how can you thank me for doing what is as gratifying to me as to yourself?" "and yet i was compelled to entreat you to do so for the fourth time. three times you excused yourself with pretexts," she cried, forgetful of her good resolutions, and carried away by her sensitiveness. "pretexts?" repeated goethe.--"well, if you will have it so, i must admit that they were pretexts, and this should convince you, charlotte, of my anxiety to avoid offending you; for to any one else i would plainly and openly have said: 'i will not come.' it will be better for us both if we avoid any further explanation. it would perhaps have been wiser, my dear charlotte, if you had endeavored to master this irritation in silence, instead of bringing about the explanations which it would have been better for us both to have avoided." "i have nothing to avoid; i can give every explanation. i can lay bare my heart and soul to you, wolf, and give an account of my every thought and deed. no, i have no cause to avoid explanations. i love you and have always been true to you, but you, you--" "my love," he said, interrupting her, "do not reproach me again; my soul's pinions are already drooping under the weight of reproaches that retard the flight of my imagination!" "now you are reproaching me!" cried charlotte. "i am to blame that the pinions of your soul are drooping! o wolf, how can you be so cruel! to reproach me!" "no, charlotte, i do not reproach you, and how could i? if you have to bear with me in many things, it is but right that i, too, should suffer. it is much better to make a friendly compromise, than to strive to conform to each other's requirements in all things, and, in the event of our endeavor being unsuccessful, to become completely estranged. i would, however, still remain your debtor in any agreement we might make. when we reflect how much we have to bear from all men, my love, it will teach us to be considerate with each other."[55] "then we are no longer to endeavor to live together in happiness, but only in an observance of consideration toward each other?" cried charlotte. "i had hoped that consideration for each other's weaknesses would lead us back to happiness. i, for my part, will gladly be indulgent." "i was not aware that i stood in need of your indulgence," said charlotte, proudly. "i will, however, be indulgent, nevertheless. and i will gladly say--that is, if you care to hear it--that your discontent and many reproaches have left no feeling of anger in my heart, although they inflicted great pain." "this is surely to be attributed to the fact that candor compels you to admit that my reproaches are just, and my discontent, as you call my sadness, but natural under the circumstances. tell me, wolf, what reproaches have i ever made that were not fully warranted by your changed manner and coldness?" "there it is!" cried goethe, beginning to lay aside his kindly manner, and to resent charlotte's haughtiness; "therein lies the reproach, and, i must say, the unmerited reproach. this is the refrain that i have been compelled to listen to ever since my return. i am changed, i love you no longer. and yet my return and my remaining here, are the best and most conclusive proofs of my love for you! for your sake, i returned--for your sake i tore myself from italy, and all the beauties that surrounded me, and--" "and also from the beauty who had entwined herself around your faithless heart," added charlotte. he did not notice this interruption, but continued in more animated tones: "and for your sake have i remained here, although i have felt that this life was scarcely endurable ever since my return. i saw herder and the duchess take their departure; she urged me to take the vacant seat in her carriage, and journey to italy in her company, but i remained, and remained on your account. and yet i am told, over and over again, that i might as well have remained away--that i no longer take an interest in my fellow-man, and that it is no pleasure to be in my company."[56] "that i have never said." "you have said that and much more! you have called me indifferent, cruel, cold-hearted! ask all my other friends if i am indifferent to them, less communicative, or take less interest in all that concerns them, than formerly. ask them if i do not belong more completely to them and to society than formerly." "yes, indeed, so it is! you belong more to them and society, because you belong less to me; you have abandoned our intimate, secret, and peculiar relation, in order to devote yourself to the world in general. this relation is no longer pleasant, because all confidence is at an end between us." "charlotte," cried he, in angry tones, "whenever i have been so fortunate as to find you reasonable and disposed to converse on interesting topics, i have felt that this confidence still existed. but this i must admit," he continued, with increased violence, and now, that the floodgates were once opened, no longer able to repress his indignation; "this i must admit, the manner in which you have treated me of late is no longer endurable. when i felt disposed to converse, you closed my lips; when i was communicative, you accused me of indifference; and when i manifested interest in my friends, you accused me of coldness and negligence. you have criticised my every word, have found fault with my manner, and have invariably made me feel thoroughly ill at ease. how can confidence and sincerity prosper when you drive me from your side with studied caprice?"[57] "with studied caprice?" repeated charlotte, bursting into tears. "as if my sadness, which he calls studied caprice, were not the natural result of the unhappiness which he has caused me." "i should like to know what unhappiness i have caused you. tell me, charlotte; make your accusations; perhaps i can succeed in convincing you that you are wrong." "it shall be as you say," cried charlotte, passionately. "i accuse you of being faithless, of having forgotten the love which you vowed should live and die with you--of having forgotten it in a twofold love, in a noble and in an unworthy one." "charlotte, consider well what you say; weigh your words lest they offend my soul." "did you weigh your words? you have offended my soul mortally, fearfully. or, perhaps, you suppose your telling me to my face that you had loved another woman in italy, and had left there in order to flee from this love, could not have inflicted such fearful pain." "had left there in order to preserve myself for _you_, charlotte; to remain true to _you_." "a great preservation, indeed, when love is already lost. and even if i admit that the beauty of the charming italian girl made you for the moment forgetful of your plighted faith, what shall i say to what is now going on here in weimar? what shall i think of the great poet, the noble man, the whole-souled, loving friend, when he finds his pleasure in secret, disreputable intercourse with a person who has neither standing nor education, who belongs to a miserable family, and who, in my estimation, is not even worthy to be my chambermaid? oh, to think, to know, that the poet goethe, the privy-councillor goethe, the scholar goethe--that he steals secretly to that wretched house in the evening to visit the daughter of a drunkard! to think that _my_ goethe, my heart's favorite, my pride, and my love, has turned from me to a person who is so low that he himself is ashamed of her, and only visits her clandestinely, anxiously endeavoring to avoid recognition!" "if i did that, it was for your sake," cried he, pale with inward agitation, his lips quivering, and his eyes sparkling. "if i visited her clandestinely, i did so because i knew that your noble perception was dimmed, and that you were no longer capable of looking down upon these petty, earthly relations from a more exalted stand-point. if you were wise and high-hearted, charlotte, you would ignore a relation that lies entirely out of the sphere in which we both live. of what nature is this relation? upon whose rights does it trespass? who lays claim to the feelings i bestow upon this poor creature? who claims the hours that i pass in her company?"[58] with a loud cry of anguish, charlotte raised her arms toward heaven, "o god, he admits it! he admits this fearful relation!" "yes," said he, proudly, "he does, but he also entreats you to aid him in preventing the relation you so greatly abhor, from degenerating--to aid him in keeping it as it is. confide in me again, look at this matter from a natural point of view, permit me to reason with you on the subject, and i may still hope to bring about a good understanding between us."[59] "not i!" she cried, with a proud toss of her head. "no good understanding can exist between us while this person stands in the way--this person who makes me blush with shame and humiliation, when i reflect that the hand which grasps my own has, perhaps, touched hers; that these lips--oh, wolf, i shudder with anger and disgust, when i reflect that you might kiss me after having kissed her a short time before!" "there will be no further occasion for such disagreeable reflections," said he, gruffly, his countenance deathly pale. "out of love i have endured much from you, but you have now gone too far! i repeat it, you will never again have to overcome the disgust of being kissed by me, and while i, as you observed, have perhaps kissed another but a short time before! and as for this other woman, i must now confess that you were quite right in reproaching me for visiting her clandestinely, and making a mystery of our relation. you are right, this is wrong and cowardly; a man must always avow his actions, boldly and openly; and this i will do! farewell, charlotte, you have shown me the right path, and i will follow it! we now separate, perhaps to meet no more in life; let me tell you before i go that i owe to you the happiest years of my life! i have known no greater happiness than my confidence in you--the confidence that has hitherto been unbounded. now, that this confidence no longer exists, i have become another being, and must in the future suffer still further changes!"[60] he ceased speaking, and struggled to repress the tears that were rushing from his heart to his eyes. charlotte stared at him in dismay and breathless anxiety. her heart stood still, her lips were parted, but she repressed the cry of anguish that trembled on her lips, as he had repressed his tears. a warm, tender, forgiving word might perhaps have called him back, and all misunderstanding might have vanished in tears, remorse, and forgiveness; but charlotte was too proud, she had been too deeply wounded in her love and vanity to consent to such a humiliation. she had exercised such great power over goethe for the past ten years, that she perhaps even now believed that he would return, humble himself before her, and endeavor to atone for the past. but the thought did not occur to her that a man can forgive the woman who mistrusts his love, but that he never will forgive her who wounds his pride and his honor. charlotte did not speak; she stood motionless, as in a trance, and saw him take up his hat, incline his head, and murmur: "farewell! dearest, beloved charlotte, farewell!" then all was still, and she saw him no longer! she glanced wildly and searchingly around the room, and when the dread consciousness that he had gone, and that she was surrounded by a terrible solitude, dawned upon her, charlotte sank down on her knees, stretched out her arms toward the door through which his dear form had vanished, and murmured, with pale, quivering lips: "farewell! lost dream of my youth, farewell! lost delight, lost happiness, lost hope, farewell! night and solitude surround me! youth and love have departed, and old age and desolation are at hand! henceforth, no one will love me! i shall be alone! fearfully alone! farewell!" while charlotte was wailing and struggling with her grief, goethe was pacing restlessly to and fro in the shady little retreat in the park to which he had so often confided his inmost thoughts in the eventful years that rolled by. when he left the park, after hours of struggling with his own heart, an expression rested on his noble and handsome countenance that had never been observed there before. an expression of mingled gloom and determination was depicted in his features. his eyes were luminous, not with their usual glow of enthusiasm, but with subdued and sudden flames. "descended into hell, and arisen again from the dead!" murmured he, with a derisive smile, as he walked on through the streets to the wretched little house in which christiane vulpius drunken father and his family lived. she came forward to greet him with an exclamation of joyous surprise, for it was the first time goethe had visited, in the light of day, the little house in which she lived. she threw herself into his extended arms, entwined hers around his neck and kissed him. goethe pressed her lovely head to his bosom, and then raised it gently between his hands. he gazed long and tenderly into her large blue eyes. "christiane," murmured he, "christiane, will you be my wife?" a dark glow suffused itself over her face and neck, and then a clear ringing peal of laughter, like the joyous outburst of a feathered songster, escaped her coral lips, displaying two rows of pearly teeth. "i, your wife, my good friend? why do you jest with poor little christiane?" "i am not jesting, christiane. i ask you in all earnestness, will you be my wife?" "in all earnestness?" repeated she, the gaze of her large, soft eyes fastened with an expression of astonishment on goethe, who stood regarding her intently, his countenance radiant with a tender smile. "give me an answer, christiane." "first, give _me_ an answer, my good friend. answer this question. do you love me? am i still your pet, your singing-bird, your little love, your fragrant violet?" "you still are, and will ever remain my pet, my singing-bird, my little love, and my violet." "then let me remain what i am, my dear sir. i am but a poor little girl, and not worthy to be the wife of a gentleman of high rank; i would cut but a poor figure at your side, as the wife of the mighty privy-councillor, and you might even suppose i had only accepted your love because i had seen the altar and this magnificence in the background." "i could not think so, my darling; i know that you love me." "then i wish you to understand, good sir, that i must remain as i am, for you are pleased with me as i am. let me still remain your violet, and blossom in obscurity, observed by no one but you, my good friend and master. i will serve you, i will be your maid-servant, and will work and sew and cook for you. for this i am suited; but i cannot become a noble lady worthy to bear your celebrated name. if i were your wife, you would often have cause to blush for me; if i remain your love, i can perhaps amuse you by my little drolleries, and you would have no cause to be ashamed of the ignorant girl who craved nothing except to be near you, and to have you smile on her sometimes."[61] "christiane, you shall ever be near me; i will always smile on you!" protested goethe, deeply moved. "always near you!" repeated christiane, in joyous, exulting tones. "oh, do let me be with you, good sir! let me be your servant--your housekeeper. i will serve and obey you, i will honor you as my master, and i will love you as my dearest friend!" "and i," said goethe, laying his hand on her golden hair, "i swear, by the eternal spirit of love and of nature, that i will love you, and that your happiness shall be the chief end of my life. i swear that i will honor you as my wife, protect and cherish you as my child, and be to you a husband and father until death." he stooped and kissed her shining hair and fair brow, and gazed tenderly into her lustrous eyes. "and now, my pet, get ready and come with me!" "to go where? you cannot intend to walk with me through the public streets in the broad light of day?" "through the public streets, and in the broad light of day, at your side!" "but that will not do," said she, in dismay. "it would not be proper for a noble, celebrated gentleman to be seen in public with a poor, humble creature like myself. what would the world say?" "let the world say what it will! come, my violet, i will transplant you to my garden, and there you shall blossom in the future." she no longer resisted, but threw her shawl over her shoulders, covered her golden tresses with the hat adorned with roses of her own manufacture, stepped with goethe from beneath the roof of her father's wretched house, and walked at his side through the streets to the stately mansion on market square, henceforth destined to be her home. goethe conducted her up the broad stairway, through the antechamber, and into his reception-room. both were silent, but the countenances of both were radiant with happiness. with a gentle hand he relieved her of her shawl and hat, pressed her to his bosom, and then, with upturned eyes, he cried, in loud and impressive tones: "oftmals hab' ich geirrt, und habe mich wieder gefunden, aber glücklicher nie; nun ist dies mädchen mein glück! ist auch dieses ein irrthum, so schont mich, ihr klügeren götter, und benehmt mir ihn erst drüben am kalten gestade."[62] chapter xii. schiller's marriage. the two great intellects, whose genius shed such rays of light over weimar, and over all germany, neither knew nor loved each other. these two heroes of poetry still kept at a distance from each other, and yet there was a wondrous uniformity in their inner life, although their outward existence was so different. goethe, the recognized poet, the man of rank, who had never known want or care: schiller, still struggling, creating much that was great and beautiful, but aspiring to, and foreseeing with prophetic mind, a future of greater and more brilliant success--schiller, the man of humble standing, who was still wrestling with want and care. his anxiety and poverty were not destined to be relieved by the appointment which schiller received in the year 1789, as professor of history at the university of jena, for--no salary was attached to this professorship! "a mr. frederick schiller," wrote (not the poet, but) the minister goethe--a report forwarded to the duke charles august at that time--"a mr. frederick schiller, who has made himself known to the world by his history of the netherlands, is disposed to take up his abode at the university of jena. the possibility of this acquisition is all the more worthy of consideration from the fact that it could be had gratis." gratis! the dukes of weimar, meiningen, altenburg, and gotha, the patrons of the university of jena, could offer nothing but a professorship without salary to the poet of "don carlos," of "fiesco," of "louise müllerin," and of "the robbers"--to the poet of so many glorious songs, to the author of "the history of the netherlands!" they had but one title, but one appointment, to bestow upon the man to honor whom was to honor themselves, and this appointment was made to save expense! schiller accepted this professorship with the nobility of mind of the poet whose soul aspired rather to honor and renown than to pecuniary reward, and who had, for those who profited by his labors while withholding all compensation, nothing but a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders and a proud smile. schiller's friends were, however, by no means satisfied with this appointment; his practical friend körner called his attention to the fact, that the necessities of life were also worthy of some consideration, advising him to inform the minister of state that the addition of a salary to his title of professor was both desirable and very necessary. but schiller was too proud to solicit as a favor what had not been accorded from a sense of duty. he would not beg bread for the _professor_, hoping that the poet would be able to support him. he had been accustomed to study close economy, and to struggle with want; care had been his inseparable companion throughout his entire life. the poet had ever looked up to heaven in blissful enthusiasm, rejoicing in the glory of god, and had been "with him" while the world was being divided among those who understood looking after their pecuniary interests better than the poet. his heart was rich, and his wants were few. he did not desire wealth, and had refused the rich lady tendered him in marriage by his friend körner. his loving heart should alone be his guide in the selection of a wife. his loving heart! had not schiller a charlotte, as well as goethe? the year 1789 had been an eventful one in goethe's heart's history, and had effected a final separation between goethe and his charlotte: the same year was also destined to be an important one in schiller's heart's history, and to bring about a crisis in his relations to his charlotte. the experience of the two women at this period was of a similar nature. charlotte von kalb had often entreated schiller to pay her a visit, but in vain. he had invariably excused himself with the plea that the duties of his professorship in jena were of such a nature that it was impossible to leave there even for a single day. at last charlotte despatched a messenger to jena with this laconic letter: "if you do not come to me in weimar, i will go to you in jena. answer." and schiller's answer was--"i am coming!" she was now awaiting him, gazing fixedly at the door; a nameless fear made her heart throb wildly. "he shall not find me weak," murmured she; "no, i will neither weep nor complain. no, my pride must give me strength to conceal my anguish, and to hear the decision, whatever it may be, with a smiling countenance. i will cover my heart with a veil, and it shall rest with him to withdraw it with a loving hand, if he will." "here you are at last, my frederick!" she said to schiller on his arrival. "it seems, however, that a threat was necessary to bring you!" "no, dearest friend," replied schiller, gayly, "the threat was unnecessary! you know that i love you with my whole soul, and my heart has always yearned to see you once more. the duties of my professorship are such that i find it almost impossible to leave jena." a bitter smile rested for a moment on charlotte's lips, but she quickly repressed it. "it is but natural that the new professor should be so busily engaged as not to be able to find time to pay his friend a visit. and yet, frederick, it was necessary that i should speak to you; life has now brought me to a point where i must decide upon taking one of two paths that lie before me." "charlotte, i am convinced that your heart and your wisdom will prompt you to take the right path," said schiller. she inclined her head in assent. "at our last interview i was excited and agitated; i reproached you for not having spoken to my husband. i believe i even wept, and called you faithless and ungrateful." "why awaken these remembrances, charlotte? i have endeavored to forget all this, and to bear in mind that we should make allowance for words uttered by our friends when irritated. we have both dreamed a sweet dream, my friend, and have, unfortunately, been made aware that our romantic air-castles are not destined to be realized in this prosaic world." "do you call the plans we have both made for our future, romantic air-castles?" "yes," replied schiller, with some little hesitation, "i am unhappily compelled to do so. a marriage with you was the brightest and most glorious air-castle of my fantasy; and may the egotism of my love be forgiven if i once dreamed that this castle might on some blissful day descend to earth and open its portals to admit us within its radiant halls! but sober thought followed quickly upon this trance of ecstasy, and told me that these heavenly dreams could not be realized." "why not?" "because i can offer you no compensation for the great sacrifice you would be compelled to make, and because the thought that you might live to regret what you had done fills me with horror. you are a lady of rank, accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of an aristocratic house. i am only a poor professor, accustomed to hardships and want, and not in a condition to provide a comfortable home for a wife. whoever takes me must enter upon life with modest expectations, and begin an existence at my side that offers little for the present but hopes and prospects. it would even require much self-denial on the part of a young girl, who is but just beginning life, to become the wife of a poor professor and poet. how much more would it require on the part of a lady of high rank to exchange a palace for an humble cottage, and to relinquish wealth, rank, and even the son she so dearly loves? what could i give her in return after she had relinquished all these blessings? charlotte, to live with me is to labor, and labor would wound your tender hands. therefore, forgive the enraptured poet, who thought only of his own happiness when he dared to hope you might still be his, without reflecting that he had no right to purchase his happiness at the expense of that of his idol." "you are right, my dear friend; we must never permit love to make us selfish, and we must consider the happiness of the object of our love more than our own. we will both consider this and act accordingly. you have my happiness at heart; let me, therefore, consider yours. schiller, i conjure you by the great spirit of truth and love, now surely hovering over us, tell me the truth--answer the question i am about to ask as truthfully as you would before god: do you love me so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively, that my possession can alone make you happy?" "charlotte, this is, indeed, a question that i could only answer before god." "god dwells in the breast of each human being, and, by the god of love, who has stretched out his hand over me, i demand of you a truthful answer to my question: do you love me so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively that my possession can alone make you happy?" a pause ensued--a long pause. the god of truth and of love, whose presence charlotte had so solemnly proclaimed, alone beheld the pale countenances of the two beings who stood face to face with the bitter feeling that nothing on earth is constant, and that all is subject to change and destruction--even love! "no!" said schiller, in a low voice, "no, i do not love you so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively. nor do i believe we would be happy together, for it is only when no passion exists that marriage can unite two beings in an eternal union; and then, charlotte, you are also too exalted for me, and a woman who is a superior being cannot, i believe, make me happy. i must have a wife whom i can educate, who is my creation, who belongs to me alone, whom i alone can make happy, and in whose existence i can renew my own--a wife who is young, inexperienced, and gentle, not highly gifted, devoted to me, and eager to contribute to my comfort and peace."[63] "in a word, a woman who is young," said charlotte, with proud composure, "or rather, a young girl who is like a sheet of white paper, on which your love is to write the first word." "yes, charlotte, so it is! you understand my heart as you have always understood it." "i relinquish from to-day all further claim to any such understanding, and i can only give you one last piece of advice, and that is, to ask mademoiselle von lengefeld if she is not desirous of being the sheet of paper on which you could write your name. i advise you to marry mademoiselle von lengefeld; she seems to possess all the required qualifications: she is not gifted, has no experience, and can certainly not be called a superior being." "but a noble, an amiable being," cried schiller, passionately; "a being full of innocence and goodness, a fair creature full of heart and feeling, full of gentleness and mildness; moreover, she has a noble heart, and a mind capable of great cultivation. she has understanding for all that is intellectual, reverence for all that is great and beautiful, and is at the same time modest, affectionate, playful, and naïve." "in brief, she is an ideal," said charlotte, derisively. "but let your thoughts sojourn with me for a moment longer. at my request you have told me the truth, now you shall hear the truth from my lips. we might have spared ourselves all these explanations, but i desired to probe your heart to assure myself that i would not wound you too deeply by telling you what i must now avow. now that i am no longer uneasy on that score, you shall hear the truth from my lips. my air-castles have vanished also--vanished so long since, that i scarcely have a recollection of them, and can only think of them as of a foolish dream, that neither could nor should have been realized. i have awakened, and i will remain what i am, the wife of mr. von kalb, and the mother of my son. i live once more in the present, and the past with all its recollections and follies is obliterated."[64] "i am glad to hear this," said schiller, in a clear and composed voice, the gaze of his large blue eyes fastened on charlotte's cold and haughty countenance with an expression of severity. "i am glad to hear that the past is obliterated from your remembrance, as it is from mine. i can now speak to you freely and openly of the happiness which the future has, as i hope, in store for me. i love charlotte von lengefeld, and now that you have discarded me, i am at liberty to ask her to become my wife." "do so," said she, quietly. "we are about to separate, but my blessing will remain with you; any correspondence between us in the future would, of course, be annoying, and as our letters of the past have become meaningless, i must request you to return mine."[65] "as you had already written to me on this subject several times, i took the precaution of bringing these letters with me to-day. here they are. i have preserved them carefully and lovingly, and i confess that it gives me great pain to part with these relics of the past." he handed her the little sealed package which he had drawn from his breast-pocket; she did not take it, however, but merely pointed to the table. "i thank you, and i will now return your letters." she walked into the adjoining room, closing the door softly behind her. with trembling hands she took schiller's letters from the little box in which she had kept them. she kissed them, pressed them to her heart and eyes, and kissed them again and again, but when she saw that a tear had fallen on the paper she wiped it off carefully; she then walked rapidly to the door and opened it. on the threshold she stood still, composed, proudly erect. "schiller, here are the letters!" he approached and took them from her hand, which she quickly withdrew. she then returned to the adjoining room, locking the door behind her. this was their leave-taking, this their parting, after long years of love! with downcast eyes and in deep sadness of heart, schiller left the house of the woman he had once loved so ardently. but this soon passed away and gave place to the blissful feeling that he was once more free--free to offer his heart, his hand, and his life, to the woman he loved! a few days later his heart's longing was gratified. he went to rudolstadt and received a loving and cordial welcome from both sisters. both! but only one of the sisters was at liberty to bestow her hand. caroline was not! her hand was fettered by her plighted troth, and even if her husband's consent to a separation could have been obtained, there were other fetters. she was in her sister's confidence. she knew that charlotte loved schiller tenderly. they were together in the quiet little parlor, they three alone, for the mother was absent on a little journey. schiller sat between the sisters, his countenance radiant with happiness. "oh, my fair friends, how delighted i am to be with you once more!" "schiller," whispered caroline, laying her hand gently on his shoulder, "schiller, i have a word to say to you. come!" she conducted him to a window-recess, and inclined her head so close to his ear that her trembling lips kissed one of his fair locks. "schiller," whispered she, "you love my sister, and i know that she loves you. courage, confess your love, and god bless you both!" having said this, she walked noiselessly from the room, retired to her solitary chamber, closed the door behind her, and sank down on her knees. she shed no tears, and the brave soul of this noble woman was exalted above all pain in this hour of her great sacrifice. her chaste lips would not express the noble secret in words, even before god. but her maker may have read her sacrifice in the expression of anguish and resignation in her upturned countenance. "be happy, schiller! god bless you both! be happy! then i will be happy, too." on returning to the parlor, caroline's countenance shone with pleasure, and her lips parted in a happy smile when she saw the two lovers in a close embrace, heart to heart. "oh, dear caroline, she has confessed; you were certainly right! she loves me, she is mine. and so are you, caroline, you are also mine, and we three will belong to each other for evermore!" "yes, for evermore, my friend, my brother!" she gently entwined her arms around schiller's and lottie's neck; and now the three were joined in one close and loving embrace. "i have at last entered the haven of happiness," said schiller, in deep emotion. "i have, at last, found my home, and eternal peace and repose are mine. i am encircled with your love as with a halo, ye beloved sisters; and now all the great expectations which you have entertained concerning me will be realized, for happiness will exalt me above myself. charlotte, you shall never again have cause to tell me i look gloomy, for your love will shed a flood of sunshine on my existence hereafter. you shall teach me to laugh and be merry. o god, i thank thee for permitting me to find this happiness! i, too, was born in arcadia!" they held each other in a close embrace, they wept for joy, and their souls, beaming eyes, and smiling lips, exchanged mute vows of eternal love and fidelity. these were blissful days for schiller. madame von lengefeld had given her consent to the marriage of her daughter lottie with schiller, sooner than the lovers expected. charles august gave the poet the title of privy-councillor, and attached a salary of two hundred dollars to his professorship, as a marriage present. the title delighted madame von lengefeld, and somewhat reconciled her aristocratic heart to the thought that her daughter, who had been on the point of becoming a maid of honor, should now marry a man of the people. schiller deemed his salary of two hundred dollars quite a small fortune, and hoped that this, together with the fruits of his poetic labors, would be sufficient to provide a comfortable home for his darling, and--"space in the smallest cottage for a happy and loving pair!" they were a "happy, loving pair;" and the serene heaven of their happiness was undimmed by the smallest cloud. had a cloud appeared, charlotte's quick eye would have detected and dissipated it before the lovers were aware of its existence. the sister watched over their happiness like their good genius, like a faithful sentinel. at times, while gazing dreamily into his lottie's soft eyes, schiller would smile and then ask her if she really loved him, as though such happiness were incredible. in reply, charlotte would smile and protest that she had loved him for a long time, and that her sister, who had known her secret, could confirm her statement. "and she it was who told me this sweet secret. yes, caroline was the beneficent angel who infused courage into my timid heart." "yes, she is an angel!" said charlotte, thoughtfully. "i look up to her as to a being far superior to myself, and, let me confess, my beloved, that the thought sometimes torments me that she really could be more to you than i am, and that i am not necessary to your happiness." he gazed into her lovely countenance, an expression of perfect peace resting on his own. "your love is all i require to make me happy. the peculiar and happiest feature of our union is, that it is self-sustaining, ever revolving on its own axis in a well-defined orbit; this forbids my entertaining the fear that i could ever be less to either of you, or that i could ever receive less from you. our love has no need of anxiety--of watchfulness. how could i rejoice in my existence unless for you and caroline?--how could i always retain sufficient control over my own soul, unless i entertained the sweet conviction that my feelings toward both, and each of you, were of such a nature that i am not forced to withdraw from the one what i give to the other? my soul revolves between you in safety, ever returning lovingly from the one to the other, the same star, the same ray of light, differently reflected from different mirrors. caroline is nearer to me in age, and therefore more closely akin to me in the form of her thought and feeling; but i would not have you other than you are, for all the world, lottie. that in which caroline is your superior, you must receive from me; your soul must expand in my love, and you must be my creation. your blossom must fall in the spring of my love."[66] "yes," cried charlotte, entwining her arm more closely around his neck, "i will be your creation, and happy shall i feel in the consciousness of belonging to you, and of being able to contribute somewhat to your happiness."[67] on the morning of the twentieth of february, 1790, a closed carriage drove rapidly from rudolstadt in the direction of jena. but this carriage stopped in the little village in the immediate vicinity of the university-city--weningenjena--at the door of the village church with its tapering spire. the sexton was standing at the open door in his sunday suit; when the carriage drove up, he hastened forward to open the door. a tall gentleman, attired in black, stepped out; his countenance was pale, but a wondrous light beamed in his eyes, and noble thoughts were enthroned on his brow, while his lips were parted in a soft smile. with tender solicitude, he helped an elderly lady from the carriage. then followed a younger lady, with pale cheeks, but with eyes that were radiant with love and peace. at last a young girl--a girl with rosy cheeks, and a timid, childlike smile on her fresh lips--was about to descend from the carriage, but the tall gentleman would not suffer her to touch the pavement with her tender little feet. he raised her fair form in his arms, and bore her over the rough stones and into the church. the two ladies followed, and behind them came the sexton, gravely shaking his head, and ruminating over the strangely quiet nature of the approaching ceremony. he did what pastor schmidt, who was already standing between the burning wax-candles in front of the altar, had told him to do. he closed and locked the church doors, so that no one should see what was going on in the church. and you, too, ye rude winter winds, hold your breath and blow softly! and thou, thou clear blue sky, look down mildly; and thou, bright sun, shed thy warmest rays through the windows into the little village church of weningenjena. for the poet frederick schiller is standing before its altar at the side of his lovely bride. charlotte weeps, but her tears are tears of emotion and of joy. the mother stands at her side, her hands folded in prayer. caroline's eyes are upturned; and god reads the mute entreaty of her lips. schiller's countenance is radiant with peace and happiness, and manly determination beams in the large blue eyes that gaze so firmly and tranquilly at the preacher, who stands before the altar, proclaiming the sacred nature of the union about to be consummated. subdue your fury, ye boisterous winter storms! do not touch the poet's cheeks too rudely with your cold breath. he has already suffered much from cold winter winds, he has journeyed over rough paths--has renounced and struggled, and has often seen his heart's fairest blossoms bruised and borne away by rude storms. be tranquil, and let the spring-time come, that the buds of his hopes may put forth blossoms. shed thy glorious light upon this little church, thou heavenly sun! greet the poet frederick schiller, the poet of the german nation, who is now celebrating life's fairest festival before its holy altar! but, "ah, life's fairest festival ends the may of life anon; with the girdle, with the veil, is the fond illusion gone!" the end. footnotes: [footnote 1: "schiller's relations to his parents and the walzogen family," pp. 62-68.] [footnote 2: fragment of a dialogue between the king and the marquis, last scene, act iii., of "don carlos:" "_king._ and now leave me. "_marquis._ if i can do so with an accomplished hope, this will be the most glorious day of my life. "_marquis._ it is no lost one in mine!"] [footnote 3: schiller's own words.--see "schiller's relations to parents," etc., p. 450.] [footnote 4: schiller's own words.--see "relations to parents," etc., p. 451.] [footnote 5: ibid., p. 416.] [footnote 6: schiller's own words.--see "relations to parents," etc. p. 452.] [footnote 7: schiller's own words to henrietta von wolzogen.--see "relations," etc., p. 452.] [footnote 8: this scene is historically exact.] [footnote 9: schiller's own words.--see "relations," etc., p. 448.] [footnote 10: see charlotte.--"for the friends of the deceased," printed as ms., p. 86.] [footnote 11: a provincialism. it should be, "ist nicht aus stuttgart," and means is not from stuttgart.] [footnote 12: in germany, the word "thou" is frequently used instead of "you" in families and among children, and intimate and dear friends.] [footnote 13: schiller's own words.--see "schiller's flight from stuttgart," etc., p. 216.] [footnote 14: zimmermann.--"frederick the great's last days," p. 163.] [footnote 15: frederick's words a short time before his death.] [footnote 16: the king's own words.] [footnote 17: "will you have the goodness to give me your arm, my prince?"] [footnote 18: "sire and my king, you confer a great honor on me, and i am very grateful."] [footnote 19: the fox and the crow.] [footnote 20: frederick's own words.--see "frederick william iii.," von eylert, vol. i., p. 455.] [footnote 21: to this habit of frederick william may be attributed the fact that he was not able to express himself fluently in his own language in later years. when the king spoke french his conversation was vivacious and forcible; when he spoke german, however, he was stiff and embarrassed.] [footnote 22: the king's own words, uttered beside frederick's corpse.] [footnote 23: this drawing, which the prince royal had made of the body of frederick the great, was afterward framed, and hung for many years in his study, with this inscription, in his own handwriting: "i sketched this on the 17th of august, 1786, between the hours of 9 and 10 /p.m./"] [footnote 24: see preuss.--"frederick the great, a biography," vol. iv.] [footnote 25: this scene is accurate.--see "mémoires de la comtesse de lichtenau."] [footnote 26: "unter den linden," a street in berlin.] [footnote 27: historical.] [footnote 28: a nickname given the princess at court.] [footnote 29: frederick von trenck suffered long years of imprisonment on princess amelia's account.--see "frederick the great and his family," by l. mühlbach.] [footnote 30: this article appeared in the august number of 1788, and created a great sensation in all classes of society.] [footnote 31: "i will repay thee in a holier land- give thou to me thy youth; all i can grant thee lies in this command. i heard, and, trusting in a holier land, gave my young joys to truth. give me thy laura--give me her whom love to thy heart's core endears; the usurer bliss pays every grief--above! i tore the fond shape from the bleeding love and gave--albeit with tears." _sir e. b. lytton's schiller._ ] [footnote 32: marie von arnim married count von kunheim, and retired with him to his estates in prussia. she never saw schiller again, nor did she ever forget him. a fine portrait of schiller hung over her bed until her death. after the death of her husband, in the year 1814, countess kunheim returned to dresden, and lived there in retirement until her death, in the year 1847. but she died without issue, and could not fulfil schiller's prophecy, and speak to weeping children and grandchildren assembled around her death-bed.] [footnote 33: schiller's own words.--see his correspondence with körner.] [footnote 34: schiller and his times, by johannes scherr.--vol. ii., p. 89.] [footnote 35: "trip to italy."--goethe's works.] [footnote 36: goethe's own words.--see "trip to italy," goethe's works, vol. xxiii., p. 159.] [footnote 37: this cat story goethe relates precisely as above, in his "italian trip."--see goethe's works, vol. xxiii., p. 181.] [footnote 38: goethe's own words.--see "italian trip," vol. xxiv., p. 146.] [footnote 39: when marriage is spoken of, my child, i feel like leaving at once.] [footnote 40: let us only marry, the rest will take care of itself.] [footnote 41: leonora's own words.--see goethe's works, vol. xxiv., p. 135.] [footnote 42: dante alighieri's divine comedy, canto v.--translated by h. w. longfellow.] [footnote 43: see goethe's works, vol. xxiv., p. 37.--"trip to italy."] [footnote 44: goethe's own words.--see correspondence of duke charles august with goethe, vol. ii.] [footnote 45: von stein, the name of goethe's sweetheart--anglicized: _stone_.] [footnote 46: goethe's correspondence with madame von stein, vol. ii., pp. 170, 171. literal translation.] [footnote 47: schiller's life, by caroline von wollzogen, p. 115.] [footnote 48: schiller's own words.--see "schiller's correspondence with körner," vol. ii., p. 21.] [footnote 49: ibid.] [footnote 50: goethe's words.--see "goethe's works," vol. xxiii.] [footnote 51: goethe's words.] [footnote 52: in the latter part of the year 1787.] [footnote 53: see "private letters," vol. iii.] [footnote 54: he who has not the spirit of his age has nothing but the unhappiness of his age. ] [footnote 55: goethe's own words.--see "goethe's correspondence with madame von stein," vol. ii., p. 326.] [footnote 56: goethe's own words.] [footnote 57: goethe's own words.--see "goethe's correspondence with madame von stein," vol. iii., p. 327.] [footnote 58: goethe's own words--see "correspondence with madame von stein," vol iii., p. 328.] [footnote 59: ibid.] [footnote 60: goethe's own words.--see "correspondence with madame von stein," vol. iii., p. 330.] [footnote 61: christiane vulpius really rejected goethe's offer of marriage.--see lewes's life of goethe, vol. ii. p. 121.] [footnote 62: "often have i erred, and always found the path again, but never found myself happier; now in this maiden lies my happiness. if this, too, is an error, oh spare me the knowledge, ye gods, and let me only discover it beyond the grave!"] [footnote 63: schiller's own words.--see "schiller's correspondence with körner," vol. ii.] [footnote 64: charlotte's own words.--see "schiller's life of caroline von wollzogen."] [footnote 65: charlotte's own words.--see "charlotte: a life picture," p. 80.] [footnote 66: schiller's own words.--see "schiller's life of caroline von wollzogen."] [footnote 67: lottie's own words.--ibid.] d. appleton and company's publications. _the seven seas._ a new volume of poems by /rudyard kipling/, author of "many inventions," "barrack-room ballads," etc. 12mo. cloth, $1.50; half calf, $3.00; morocco, $5.00. 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"'many inventions' will confirm mr. kipling's reputation.... we would cite with pleasure sentences from almost every page, and extract incidents from almost every story. but to what end? here is the completest book that mr. kipling has yet given us in workmanship, the weightiest and most humane in breadth of view."--_pall mall gazette._ "mr. kipling's powers as a story-teller are evidently not diminishing. we advise everybody to buy 'many inventions,' and to profit by some of the best entertainment that modern fiction has to offer."--_new york sun._ "'many inventions' will be welcomed wherever the english language is spoken.... every one of the stories bears the imprint of a master who conjures up incident as if by magic, and who portrays character, scenery, and feeling with an ease which is only exceeded by the boldness of force."--_boston globe._ by anthony hope. _the chronicles of count antonio._ with photogravure frontispiece by s. w. van schaick. 12mo. cloth, $1.50. "no adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of antonio of monte velluto, a very bayard among outlaws.... to all those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high courage, we may recommend this book.... the chronicle conveys the emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely written."--_london daily news._ "it has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather deep order.... in point of execution 'the chronicles of count antonio' is the best work that mr. hope has yet done. the design is clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more colored."--_westminster gazette._ "a romance worthy of all the expectations raised by the brilliancy of his former books, and likely to be read with a keen enjoyment and a healthy exaltation of the spirits by every one who takes it up."--_the scotsman._ "a gallant tale, written with unfailing freshness and spirit."--_london daily telegraph._ "one of the most fascinating romances written in english within many days. the quaint simplicity of its style is delightful, and the adventures recorded in these 'chronicles of count antonio' are as stirring and ingenious as any conceived even by weyman at his best."--_new york world._ "no adventures were ever better worth telling than those of count antonio.... the author knows full well how to make every pulse thrill, and how to hold his readers under the spell of his magic."--_boston herald._ _the god in the car._ new edition. uniform with "the chronicles of count antonio." 12mo. cloth, $1.25. "'the god in the car' is just as clever, just as distinguished in style, just as full of wit, and of what nowadays some persons like better than wit--allusiveness--as any of his stories. it is saturated with the modern atmosphere; is not only a very clever but a very strong story; in some respects, we think, the strongest mr. hope has yet written."--_london speaker._ "a very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible within our limit; brilliant, but not superficial; well considered, but not elaborated; constructed with the proverbial art that conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers to whom fine literary method is a keen pleasure."--_london world._ "the book is a brilliant one.... 'the god in the car' is one of the most remarkable works in a year that has given us the handiwork of nearly all our best living novelists."--_london standard._ gilbert parker's best books. uniform edition. _the seats of the mighty._ being the memoirs of captain /robert moray/, sometime an officer in the virginia regiment, and afterwards of amherst's regiment illustrated, $1.50. "another historical romance of the vividness and intensity of 'the seats of the mighty' has never come from the pen of an american. mr. parker's latest work may without hesitation be set down as the best he has done. from the first chapter to the last word interest in the book never wanes; one finds it difficult to interrupt the narrative with breathing space. it whirls with excitement and strange adventure.... all of the scenes do homage to the genius of mr. parker, and make 'the seats of the mighty' one of the books of the year."--_chicago record._ "mr. gilbert parker is to be congratulated on the excellence of his latest story, 'the seats of the mighty,' and his readers are to be congratulated on the direction which his talents have taken therein.... it is so good that we do not stop to think of its literature, and the personality of doltaire is a masterpiece of creative art."--_new york mail and express._ _the trail of the sword._ a novel. $1.25. 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"a book which no one will be satisfied to put down until the end has been matter of certainty and assurance."--_the nation._ "a story of remarkable interest, originality, and ingenuity of construction."--_boston home journal._ _mrs. falchion._ $1.25. "a well-knit story, told in an exceedingly interesting way, and holding the reader's attention to the end." by a. conan doyle, _uniform edition. 12mo. cloth, $1.50 per volume._ _uncle bernac. a romance of the empire._ illustrated. "'uncle bernac' is for a truth dr. doyle's napoleon. viewed as a picture of the little man in the gray coat, it must rank before anything he has written. the fascination of it is extraordinary."--_london daily chronicle._ "from the opening pages the clear and energetic telling of the story never falters and our attention never flags."--_london observer._ _rodney stone._ illustrated. 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"the brigadier is brave, resolute, amorous, loyal, chivalrous; never was a foe more ardent in battle, more clement in victory, or more ready at need.... gallantry, humor, martial gayety, moving incident, make up a really delightful book."--_london times._ "may be set down without reservation as the most thoroughly enjoyable book that dr. doyle has ever published."--_boston beacon._ _the stark munro letters._ being a series of twelve letters written by /stark munro/, m. b., to his friend and former fellow-student, herbert swanborough, of lowell, massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884. illustrated. "cullingworth,... a much more interesting creation than sherlock holmes, and i pray dr. doyle to give us more of him."--_richard le gallienne, in the london star._ "'the stark munro letters' is a bit of real literature.... its reading will be an epoch-making event in many a life."--_philadelphia evening telegraph._ _round the red lamp. being facts and fancies of medical life._ "too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions, that to read keep one's heart leaping to the throat, and the mind in a tumult of anticipation to the end.... no series of short stories in modern literature can approach them."--_hartford times._ "if dr. a. conan doyle had not already placed himself in the front rank of living english writers by 'the refugees,' and other of his larger stories, he would surely do so by these fifteen short tales."--_new york mail and express._ by s. r. crockett. uniform edition. each, 12mo, cloth, $1.50. _the standard bearer._ an historical romance. 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"it seems to us that there is in this latest product much of the realism of personal experience. however modified and disguised, it is hardly possible to think that the writer's personality does not present itself in saunders mcquhirr.... rarely has the author drawn more truly from life than in the cases of nance and 'the hempie'; never more typical scotsman of the humble sort than the farmer peter chrystie."--_london athenæum._ _cleg kelly, arab of the city. his progress and adventures._ illustrated. "a masterpiece which mark twain himself has never rivaled.... if there ever was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic ragamuffin."--_london daily chronicle._ "in no one of his books does mr. crockett give us a brighter or more graphic picture of contemporary scotch life than in 'cleg kelly.'... it is one of the great books."--_boston daily advertiser._ _bog-myrtle and peat._ third edition. "here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life, written in words that thrill and burn.... each is a poem that has an immortal flavor. they are fragments of the author's early dreams, too bright, too gorgeous, too full of the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds to be caught and held palpitating in expression's grasp."--_boston courier._ "hardly a sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to the reader for its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and admirable portrayal of character."--_boston home journal._ _the lilac sunbonnet._ eighth edition. "a love story, pure and simple, one of the old fashioned, wholesome, sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half so sweet has been written this year it has escaped our notice."--_new york times._ "the general conception of the story, the motive of which is the growth of love between the young chief and heroine, is delineated with a sweetness and a freshness, a naturalness and a certainty, which places 'the lilac sunbonnet' among the best stories of the time."--_new york mail and express._ stephen crane's books. _the third violet._ 12mo. cloth, $1.00. "by this latest product of his genius our impression of mr. crane is confirmed that, for psychological insight, for dramatic intensity, and for the potency of phrase, he is already in the front rank of english and american writers of fiction, and that he possesses a certain separate quality which places him apart."--_london academy._ "the whole book, from beginning to end, fairly bristles with fun.... it is adapted for pure entertainment, yet it is not easily put down or forgotten."--_boston herald._ _the little regiment, and other episodes of the american civil war._ 12mo. cloth, $1.00. "in 'the little regiment' we have again studies of the volunteers waiting impatiently to fight and fighting, and the impression of the contest as a private soldier hears, sees, and feels it, is really wonderful. the reader has no privileges. he must, it seems, take his place in the ranks, and stand in the mud, wade in the river, fight, yell, swear, and sweat with the men. he has some sort of feeling, when it is all over, that he has been doing just these things. this sort of writing needs no praise. it will make its way to the hearts of men without praise."--_new york times._ "told with a _verve_ that brings a whiff of burning powder to one's nostrils.... in some way he blazons the scene before our eyes, and makes us feel the very impetus of bloody war."--_chicago evening post._ _maggie: a girl of the streets._ 12mo. cloth, 75 cents. "by writing 'maggie' mr. crane has made for himself a permanent place in literature.... zola himself scarcely has surpassed its tremendous portrayal of throbbing, breathing, moving life."--_new york mail and express._ "mr. crane's story should be read for the fidelity with which it portrays a life that is potent on this island, along with the best of us. it is a powerful portrayal, and, if somber and repellent, none the less true, none the less freighted with appeal to those who are able to assist in righting wrongs."--_new york times._ _the red badge of courage. an episode of the american civil war._ 12mo. cloth, $1.00. "never before have we had the seamy side of glorious war so well depicted.... the action of the story throughout is splendid, and all aglow with color, movement, and vim. the style is as keen and bright as a sword-blade, and a kipling has done nothing better in this line."--_chicago evening post._ "there is nothing in american fiction to compare with it.... mr. crane has added to american literature something that has never been done before, and that is, in its own peculiar way, inimitable."--_boston beacon._ "a truer and completer picture of war than either tolstoy or zola."--_london new review._ hamlin garland's books. uniform edition. each, 12mo, cloth, $1.25. _wayside courtships._ "a faithful and an entertaining portrayal of village and rural life in the west.... no one can read this collection of short stories without feeling that he is master of the subject."--_chicago journal._ "one of the most delightful books of short stories which have come to our notice in a long time."--_boston times._ "the historian of the plains has done nothing better than this group of western stories. wayside courtships they are, but full of tender feeling and breathing a fine, strong sentiment."--_louisville times._ _jason edwards. an average man._ "the average man in the industrial ranks is presented in this story in as lifelike a manner as mr. bret harte presented the men in the california mining camps thirty years ago.... a story which will be read with absorbing interest by hundreds of workingmen."--_boston herald._ _a member of the third house. a story of political warfare._ "the work is, in brief, a keen and searching study of lobbies and lobbyists. at least, it is the lobbies that furnish its motive. for the rest, the story is narrated with much power, and the characters of brennan the smart wire-puller, the millionaire davis, the reformer tuttle, and evelyn ward are skillfully individualized.... mr. garland's people have this peculiar characteristic, that they have not had a literary world made for them to live in. they seem to move and act in the cold gray light of reality, and in that trying light they are evidently human."--_chicago record._ _a spoil of office. a story of the modern west._ "it awakens in the mind a tremendous admiration for an artist who could so find his way through the mists of familiarity to an artistic haven.... in reading 'a spoil of office' one feels a continuation of interest extending from the fictional into the actual, with no break or divergence. and it seems to be only a question of waiting a day or two ere one will run up against the characters in real life." also, _a little norsk; or, ol' pap's flaxen._ 16mo. boards, 50 cents. 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"a tale quite unusual, entirely unlike any other, full of a strange power and realism, and touched with a fine humor."--_london world._ "one of the most remarkable and powerful of the year's contributions, worthy to stand with ian maclaren's."--_british weekly._ "one of the rare books which can be read with great pleasure and recommended without reservation. it is fresh, pure, sweet, and pathetic, with a pathos which is perfectly wholesome."--_st. paul globe._ "the story is an intensely human one, and it is delightfully told.... the author shows a marvelous keenness in character analysis, and a marked ingenuity in the development of her story."--_boston advertiser._ _into the highways and hedges._ $1.50. "a touch of idealism, of nobility of thought and purpose, mingled with an air of reality and well-chosen expression, are the most notable features of a book that has not the ordinary defects of such qualities. with all its elevation of utterance and spirituality of outlook and insight it is wonderfully free from overstrained or exaggerated matter, and it has glimpses of humor. most of the characters are vivid, yet there are restraint and sobriety in their treatment, and almost all are carefully and consistently evolved."--_london athenæum._ "'into the highways and hedges' is a book not of promise only, but of high achievement. it is original, powerful, artistic, humorous. it places the author at a bound in the rank of those artists to whom we look for the skillful presentation of strong personal impressions of life and character."--_london daily news._ "the pure idealism of 'into the highways and hedges' does much to redeem modern fiction from the reproach it has brought upon itself.... the story is original, and told with great refinement."--_philadelphia public ledger._ two successful american novels. _latitude 19°._ a romance of the west indies in the year of our lord 1820. being a faithful account and true, of the painful adventures of the skipper, the bo's'n, the smith, the mate, and cynthia. by mrs. /schuyler crowninshield/. illustrated. 12mo. cloth, $1.50. "'latitude 19°' is a novel of incident, of the open air, of the sea, the shore, the mountain eyrie, and of breathing, living entities, who deal with nature at first hand.... the adventures described are peculiarly novel and interesting.... packed with incidents, infused with humor and wit, and faithful to the types introduced, this book will surely appeal to the large audience already won, and beget new friends among those who believe in fiction that is healthy without being maudlin, and is strong without losing the truth."--_new york herald._ "a story filled with rapid and exciting action from the first page to the last. a fecundity of invention that never lags, and a judiciously used vein of humor."--_the critic._ "a volume of deep, undeniable charm. a unique book from a fresh, sure, vigorous pen."--_boston journal._ "adventurous and romantic enough to satisfy the most exacting reader.... abounds in situations which make the blood run cold, and yet, full of surprises as it is, one is continually amazed by the plausibility of the main incidents of the narrative.... a very successful effort to portray the sort of adventures that might have taken place in the west indies seventy five or eighty years ago.... very entertaining with its dry humor."--_boston herald._ _a herald of the west._ an american story of 1811-1815. by /j. a. altsheler/, author of "a soldier of manhattan" and "the sun of saratoga." 12mo. cloth, $1.50. "'a herald of the west' is a romance of our history which has not been surpassed in dramatic force, vivid coloring, and historical interest.... in these days when the flush of war has only just passed, the book ought to find thousands of readers, for it teaches patriotism without intolerance, and it shows, what the war with spain has demonstrated anew, the power of the american people when they are deeply roused by some great wrong."--_san francisco chronicle._ "the book throughout is extremely well written. it is condensed, vivid, picturesque.... a rattling good story, and unrivaled in fiction for its presentation of the american feeling toward england during our second conflict."--_boston herald._ "holds the attention continuously.... the book abounds in thrilling attractions.... it is a solid and dignified acquisition to the romantic literature of our own country, built around facts and real persons."--_chicago times-herald._ "in a style that is strong and broad, the author of this timely novel takes up a nascent period of our national history and founds upon it a story of absorbing interest."--_philadelphia item._ "mr. altsheler has given us an accurate as well as picturesque portrayal of the social and political conditions which prevailed in the republic in the era made famous by the second war with great britain."--_brooklyn eagle._ _"a book that will live."_ _david harum._ a story of american life. by /edward noyes westcott/. 12mo. cloth, $1.50. "mr. westcott has done for central new york what mr. cable, mr. page, and mr. harris have done for different parts of the south, and what miss jewett and miss wilkins are doing for new england, and mr. hamlin garland for the west.... 'david harum' is a masterly delineation of an american type.... here is life with all its joys and sorrows.... david harum lives in these pages as he will live in the mind of the reader.... he deserves to be known by all good americans; he is one of them in boundless energy, in large-heartedness, in shrewdness, and in humor."--_the critic._ "thoroughly a pure, original, and fresh american type. david harum is a character whose qualities of mind and heart, eccentricities, and dry humor will win for his creator notable distinction. buoyancy, life, and cheerfulness are dominant notes. in its vividness and force the story is a strong, fresh picture of american life. original and true, it is worth the same distinction which is accorded the _genre_ pictures of peculiar types and places sketched by mr. george w. cable, mr. joel chandler harris, mr. thomas nelson page, miss wilkins, miss jewett, mr. garland, miss french, miss murfree, mr. gilbert parker, mr. owen wister, and bret harte.... a pretty love story also adds to the attractiveness of the book, that will be appreciated at once by every one who enjoys real humor, strong character, true pictures of life, and work that is 'racy of the soil.'"--_boston herald._ "mr. westcott has created a new and interesting type.... the character sketching and building, so far as david harum is concerned, is well-nigh perfect. the book is wonderfully bright, readable, and graphic."--_new york times._ "the main character ought to become familiar to thousands of readers, and will probably take his place in time beside joel chandler harris's and thomas nelson page's and miss wilkins's creations."--_chicago times-herald._ "we give edward noyes westcott his true place in american letters--placing him as a humorist next to mark twain, as a master of dialect above lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to bret harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of american readers. if the author is dead--lamentable fact--his book will live."--_philadelphia item._ "true, strong, and thoroughly alive, with a humor like that of abraham lincoln and a nature as sweet at the core. the spirit of the book is genial and wholesome, and the love story is in keeping with it.... the book adds one more to the interesting list of native fiction destined to live, portraying certain localities and types of american life and manners."--_boston literary world._ "a notable contribution to those sectional studies of american life by which our literature has been so greatly enriched in the past generation.... a work of unusual merit."--_philadelphia press._ "one of the few distinct and living types in the american gallery."--_st. louis globe-democrat._ "the quaint character of 'david harum' proves to be an inexhaustible source of amusement."--_chicago evening post._ "it would be hard to say wherein the author could have bettered the portrait he sets before us."--_providence journal._ "full of wit and sweetness."--_baltimore herald._ "merits the heartiest and most unequivocal praise.... it is a pleasure to call the reader's attention to this strong and most original novel, a novel that is a decided and most enduring addition to american literature."--_boston saturday evening gazette._ a pictorial history of the war with spain. _cannon and camera._ sea and land battles of the spanish-american war in cuba, camp life, and return of the soldiers. described and illustrated by /j. c. hemment/, war artist at the front. with over one hundred full-page pictures taken by the author, and an index. large 12mo. cloth, $2.00. "the most interesting book about the war so far is 'cannon and camera.' it is also the best, considered purely as a narrative. mr. hemment was at the right places at the right times.... no series of pictures as good as this on the scenes and events of the war has been made by any other man."--_boston herald._ "clever and picturesque.... over one hundred capital instantaneous photographs illustrate mr. hemment's well-written record, and not the least of the book's recommendations is the outspoken simplicity of its style and the strong impression it makes upon the reader of being the uninfluenced evidence of an eye-witness who 'draws the thing as he see it,' and without exaggeration or prejudice."--_sunday-school times._ "will have a permanent value and a popularity which doubtless the more technical books will lack."--_army and navy register._ "accurate as well as picturesque.... mr. hemment has done his work well. in point of faithful realism there has thus far been nothing better in the whole war literature."--_boston journal._ "the pictures comprise the best set of war views that we have seen."--_philadelphia inquirer._ "he is able to give us consecutive pictures of the war, possessing the great value of viewing it from beginning to end."--_baltimore sun._ "it is a history of the war that will become more valuable as time passes, for it is, in its pictures, an unimpeachable record of events."--_cleveland plain dealer._ _recollections of the civil war._ by /charles a. dana/. with portrait. large 12mo. cloth, gilt top, uncut, $2.00. "out of his rich material mr. dana has woven a marvelous narrative.... written, as the book is, in mr. dana's inimitable english, it is worthy to rank with the autobiography of grant in the list of the really great works which will bear down to posterity the true story of the great war for freedom and for the union."--_boston journal._ "it is a book filled with vitality and warm with strong life. it tells history in the strongest and most impressive manner, and the personality of the writer gives it an additional interest. it is one of the valuable books of the year.... it is sincere even in its prejudices; the most original and enduring work of a strong thinker. the book is a most important contribution to the history of the civil war; it is readable from first page to last, and its vitality will outlast that of more elaborate works on the same subject."--_boston saturday evening gazette._ "the book will rank among the trustworthy sources of knowledge of the civil war."--_new york evening post._ "as interesting as a novel."--_buffalo commercial._ "the book is one of absorbing interest."--_providence journal._ the story of the west series. /edited by/ ripley hitchcock. each, illustrated, 12mo, cloth, $1.50. _the story of the railroad._ by /cy warman/, author of "the express messenger," etc. with maps, and many illustrations by b. west clinedinst and from photographs. "as we understand it, the editor's ruling idea in this series has not been to present chronology or statistics or set essays on the social and political development of the great west, but to give to us vivid pictures of the life and the times in the period of great development, and to let us see the men at their work, their characters, and their motives. the choice of an author has been fortunate. in mr. warman's book we are kept constantly reminded of the fortitude, the suffering, the enterprise, and the endurance of the pioneers. we see the glowing imagination of the promoter, and we see the engineer scouting the plains and the mountains, fighting the indians, freezing and starving, and always full of a keen enthusiasm for his work and of noble devotion to his duty. the construction train and the irish boss are not forgotten, and in the stories of their doings we find not only courage and adventure, but wit and humor."--_the railroad gazette._ _the story of the cowboy._ by /e. hough/, author of "the singing mouse stories," etc. illustrated by william l. wells and c. m. russell. "mr. hough is to be thanked for having written so excellent a book. the cowboy story, as this author has told it, will be the cowboy's fitting eulogy. this volume will be consulted in years to come as an authority on past conditions of the far west. for fine literary work the author is to be highly complimented. here, certainly, we have a choice piece of writing."--_new york times._ _the story of the mine._ as illustrated by the great comstock lode of nevada. by /charles howard shinn/. "mr. shinn writes from ample personal acquaintance with his subject--such acquaintance as could only be gained by familiarity with the men and the places described, by repeated conversations with survivors of the early mining adventures in the sierras and the rockies, and by the fullest appreciation of the pervading spirit of the western mining camps of yesterday and to-day. thus his book has a distinctly human interest, apart from its value as a treatise on things material."--_review of reviews._ _the story of the indian._ by /george bird grinnell/, author of "pawnee hero stories," "blackfoot lodge tales," etc. "only an author qualified by personal experience could offer us a profitable study of a race so alien from our own as is the indian in thought, feeling, and culture. only long association with indians can enable a white man measurably to comprehend their thoughts and enter into their feelings. such association has been mr. grinnell's."--_new york sun._ d. appleton and company, new york. 